Programme Evaluation: Assessing 'We Act' Intervention in Schools

This report presents an evaluation of the 'We Act' intervention, a health-promoting school program designed to encourage healthy behaviors in children. The study, based on a quasi-experimental design, assesses the program's implementation fidelity, examining factors such as reach, dose, and context across multiple schools. The report details the intervention's components, including educational, school, and parental involvement pillars, and the use of the IVAC (Investigation, Vision, Action, Change) approach. Data collection methods included field visits, questionnaires, classroom observations, and interviews with stakeholders, including pupils, educators, parents, and principals. The findings reveal variations in program delivery and highlight challenges related to reach, dose, and contextual factors like workload and competing activities. The report concludes by suggesting a mixed-method formative evaluation for implementing the program in Singapore schools, emphasizing the importance of addressing identified issues and incorporating innovative improvements before wider implementation.

Running head: SOCIAL WORK PROGRAMME EVALUATION
PROGRAMME EVALUATION
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1PROGRAMME EVALUATION
Response to Q1
Researchers believed that childhood is the effective development stage of life for
practicing a healthy diet and adopting the behaviour of physical activities. Therefore, it is
essential and crucial for the schools to practice or approach the health-promoting activities.
Researchers have conducted the study with the purpose and objective of formulating,
implementing along with evaluating an intervention of health-promoting school.
The IVAC (Investigation, vision, action, change) approach focuses on a framework
that encompasses the participation of people towards the change in healthy behaviour by
involving in the school or community that delivers the change process. This IVAC
methodology would assist in developing the Vision of the schools practicing health-
promoting activity and would share them with a broad population. Therefore, the intervention
theory of We Act was to promote healthy behaviour among people in a larger context.
Researchers have stated that any preventive and beneficial program implementing in
the schools would be a complex approach. The teachers or educators implementing these
practices are only half of the total number of educators. The rest of the educators or teachers
would weaken the approach of practice and implementation. The objectives or consistency of
the program implemented is an effective and crucial approach for the positive outcomes.
Therefore, researchers have claimed the importance and necessity of process evaluation. This
process evaluation would assist or help in explaining the rationing of the intervention results
or findings. In most of the scenarios, there is a maximum chance of type III errors. These
errors are the causes of the major drawback of the research or study. Thus, process evaluation
would help in reducing the wrong conclusion that can be rise due to type III errors and
prevent an adverse effect of the intervention. The significant characteristics of process
evaluations are quality of deliveries, adaptions, participants' responsiveness, dose, fidelity,

2PROGRAMME EVALUATION
and contexts. For implementing fidelity, researchers have conducted the process of evaluation
as it would help in capturing the specific interventions and comparing it with the existing
theory or evidence that would help the readers or audience to distinguish among the adaption
of intervention in multiple contexts.
The hierarchy of evidence acts as an informative guide when one who is conducting
the research wants to select the appropriate qualities of study for their research (Nicholas,
2020). In this article, researchers have conducted a quasi-experimental study. A quasi-
experimental study is free from randomization. Thus, it is the evidence that has been retrieved
from well-designed control trials. As per the hierarchy of evidence, the quality of the
evidence is good as it provides intervention from particulars selected schools and feedback
from teachers, parents, and participants (Bonde et al., 2018).
Response to Q2
The intervention theory of We Act was that students are partaking in wellbeing
instruction following the IVAC strategy that would create a vision for wellbeing of the school
that promotes the health-promoting activity (Bonde et al., 2018). This Vision would further
present or share with the larger participation or population for the adaption of the effective
healthy behaviour activities. The sharing of Vision would prompt the people or participants to
involve in the act of promoting health and bring the action into their lives. Thus, it would
help in bringing change into themselves towards the wellbeing. The health-promotion activity
would promote healthy lifestyles such as a healthy diet, social capital, physical activities, and
overall wellbeing.
The three pillars of intervention that the researchers have included are school
component, an educational component, and parental component. The first pillar comprises
multiple elements:

3PROGRAMME EVALUATION
 We Act flyer advising the school network about the intercession
 Initial gatherings with principals and key instructors to set up the conditions and
concur upon the usage procedure
 Ability workshops for every included educator, principals and other asset people at
each school
 The arrangement of a wellbeing panel with the essential undertaking of supporting the
progress from students' dreams to activities at the homeroom and school levels.
The second pillar of the education component involves four health-education programs.
'IMOVE,' 'IEAT,' 'Action and change' and 'Vision' are the four key elements of the education
component. IMOVE would help people in investigating their physical activities, and
similarly, IEAT would help in checking food intake. Vision stage, where students expand
their view for wellbeing advancing school and present them to a school crowd; this speaks to
the progress to the last stage, Action, and Change, where individuals work to understand their
dreams with the help of instructors, wellbeing board school the board and guardians.
The parental segment included the accompanying:
 An application called Healthy Kids Denmark©, which gives motivation to packed
meals
 A landing page and a Facebook bunch for correspondence among guardians
 A handout, which is known as "My food along with meals in school," to be made by
the students during the IEAT exercises and brought home and examined with their
families or parents.
Thus, the We Act mediation and material were created by a group of wellbeing advancement
analysts in effective participation with schools, educators, and students (Bonde et al., 2018).

4PROGRAMME EVALUATION
Response to Q3
The researchers have incorporated the major key factors that would assist in
implementing fidelity. Those key factors were reach, dose, and context, along with delivery.
Here, reach indicates the accessibility of reaching target groups with the help of the projected
dose of lessons. Context refers to any external factors or elements to the intervention that
would affect the outcome of the implementation.
The data were collected from the four schools while implementing the programs. The
mode of data collections were field visits, questionnaire, classroom observation, and
interviews. Researchers have directed four starting gatherings and took an interest in four
ability workshops encouraged by outer wellbeing advancing school advisor. During the
implementation time frame, researchers have visited each school a few times and gathered
information through field visits, polls, and meetings.
The indicators of fidelity would help in answering the evaluation question. The
researchers have provided the rationale for conducting the field study, as it would help in
collecting reliable data on the process of implementation in every school. This field study
would also allow the researchers to interact directly among the teachers, students, and
material of We Act. Researchers have acted as an observer and took the necessary inputs to
form the field. Further, researchers have also formulated a questionnaire for the educators or
teachers regarding their approaches to the implementation of each health program (IMOVE,
IEACT, Action & change, and Vision). Further, after the complete implementation of the
programs in the schools, the online questionnaires were distributed to the parents. It was done
to understand the parental support component. Understanding from the pupil perspective,
focus group interviews were conducted for every class. Apart from these populations, the
principles were also invited to provide the relevant feedback along with the delivery of vision
workshops. Furthermore, the principles have participated in the follow-up interview process

5PROGRAMME EVALUATION
for providing the present situation of the implementation. The data were analysed in multiple
steps and implement the procedures and principles of analysing the qualitative data.
Therefore, it started from the systematic reading of multiple raw data retrieved from the field
survey and followed by the interviews with multiple stakeholders. These stakeholders were
teachers and principals.
The data collection method was taken in such a way that it provides a higher quality
of evidence to support the aim of the research. The main purpose or objectives of the
researchers were to explore the fidelity of the implementation of the programs. Therefore,
researchers have taken or chosen multiple techniques and approaches to interact with the
major stakeholders of the program about asking them a relevant question regarding the
delivery of the implemented program (Bonde et al., 2018).
Response Q4
Researchers have researched to understand the quality and fidelity of the
implementation of the health-promoting programs and IVAC approach in schools for the
welfare of the children. As in the initial age of growth, children have a higher rate of the
development stage. Researchers with the help of We Act intervention have found the results
related to the reach, dose & delivery, along with the context. These parameters considered as
the evaluation parameter by the researchers for the effective results. The results would help in
understanding the indicator of fidelity.
The first key element, 'Reach', has raised an evaluation question relating to whether
the target audience has been reached. The target audience here are pupil, educator, parents,
and principles. It was found that the pupils, teachers or educators, parents and principles were
proposed with the relevant and necessity of the program. The pupil within the grades of 5 – 6
was reached. Thus, principals have assigned multiple teachers in delivering the educational

6PROGRAMME EVALUATION
programme. IMOVE was delivered by 10 maths teachers followed by the 11 Danish-
language educators promoting the practice of IEAT. Supporting teachers were assigned to
deliver the workshops on Vision, along with action and change. The major finding that has
been driven by the 'Reach' parameter is the response rate from parents was low. Besides, they
have only attended 4 out of 12 classes.
The 'dose and delivery' is another parameter that would help in the intervention of 'We
Act intervention.' Educators have performed fewer lessons than the actual rate of lessons and
also did not follow or used the proposed assignments. The number of teachers was also varied
from IEAT than IMOVE. The majority of the practices were in IEAT rather than IMOVE.
The teachers have also mentioned that it was easier for letting the pupil make a handout about
their likes to be in a packed meal. Further, it was found that very few pupils have taken the
handout to their homes and shared with their parents. The following up with parents were
also not done as was proposed in the initial of the program.
The third element was the context in implementing the We Act intervention. In every
school, the primary external factors that were influencing the implementation of the program
were competition along with the workload from multiple educational activities. Thus, it led
towards delaying in the starting the We Act implementation. Only in one school, the program
has started in January and rests all other schools have started by February, March, or April.
Other parameters such as planned activities, theatre performance were also affecting in
delaying of the implementation of the program. The illness of teachers or educators was
another issue that can be considered as a context factor. However, alternative teachers were
assigned. However, they could not complete the program due to disconnection from the entire
process (Bonde et al., 2018).

7PROGRAMME EVALUATION
Although the 'We Act' was intended to conform to evidence and hypothesis based
prerequisites, IVAC, along with the health-promoting school approach, didn't found a change
in the school setting.
Response to Q5
For bringing the 'we act' intervention in the mainstream schools of Singapore, it is
crucial to conduct effective research that would provide the evidence-based approach to
implement the program in the mainstream schools. The initial stage is to select the type of
evaluation that needs to be conducted. The formative evaluation would be conducted as it
provides the responses that can be used as a review before implementing it. This evaluation
would also help in resolving any issues, and further, it would also assist in directing
innovative ideas that may improve or enhance the program before implementing it.
For conducting the research, the chosen research method would be mixed-method
evaluation. This mixed-method involves both the qualitative along with a qualitative method
that would have improved the reliability and validity of the data. Further, the qualitative
method and quantitative method would go in a sequential approach (Morse, 2016). Different
choices ought to be talked about as a group to guarantee that various viewpoints were thought
of, and to remember choices for the units of examination, inspecting technique, kinds of
information gathered, the way to deal with use when gathering information, how the
information will be investigated, how to access the necessary data or respondents, and so on.
The significant key stakeholders of schools are educators and parents of children.
Therefore, major stakeholders in this research principals, parents, and educators. The
implementation of the program is going to practice within the schools. The data collection
method would be interviews and observation. The interview would help the researcher to
directly interact with the target population and build effective trust relations and would help

8PROGRAMME EVALUATION
in gaining reliable data. Interviews can be taken from the principles to understand the practice
of adoption of the program. The next mode is observation; this would allow in rating the
session of intervention. The observation process is directly aligning with the objective, and it
would assess accordingly to accurate data.
The sampling method would be non-probability sampling for conducting the current
research or study. Further, specifically, it would be purposeful sampling. The purposeful
sampling would focus on selecting the sample based on a specific parameter or element. In
this research, the samples are chosen who are related to the schools. Thus, the sampling
strategy might be particularly helpful to address explicit research inquiries regarding a
specific sub-segment of the populace, for example, members who dropped out in the wake of
going to a solitary guiding meeting, even though the instructor saw the meeting to have
worked out in a good way and affinity to have been fabricated (Etikan & Bala, 2017).

9PROGRAMME EVALUATION
References
Bonde, A. H., Stjernqvist, N. W., Sabinsky, M. S., & Maindal, H. T. (2018). Process
evaluation of implementation fidelity in a Danish health-promoting school
intervention. BMC public health, 18(1), 1407.
Etikan, I., & Bala, K. (2017). Sampling and sampling methods. Biometrics & Biostatistics
International Journal, 5(6), 00149.
Morse, J. M. (2016). Mixed method design: Principles and procedures (Vol. 4). Routledge.
Nicholas, N. (2020). SWK290 Programme evaluation (study guide). Singapore: Singapore
University of Social Sciences.