Promoting physical activity in communities: Approaches for successful evaluation of programs and policies

There are few studies evaluating changes made to enhance the activity friendliness of a community. The purpose of this paper is to review approaches that practitioners can use to evaluate interventions at the community level. Interventions at the community level address indicators across the physical, socio-cultural, institutional/organizational and political/economic environments. Evaluation approaches can include a variety of perceived and objective measures, including self-report surveys, in-depth interviews, environmental audits and use of existing data. The purpose of each approach, along with examples, is presented first, followed by a discussion of how and when each approach should be used and other considerations when evaluating interventions. In addition, this paper reviews special considerations for policy evaluation, while highlighting the need for such work. The paper concludes with a section discussing overarching challenges and lessons learned, including the use of multiple sources of data, participatory approaches and reliable and valid measurement tools.