Table 1 Data collection for Prevention Centre evaluation
From: Knowledge mobilisation in practice: an evaluation of the Australian Prevention Partnership Centre
Method | Period | Objective | Data collection details | Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Interviews with the Centre’s chief investigators and funding partners | January–March 2016 | To explore experiences of involvement, perceptions about the Centre’s functioning and achievements, and areas for improvement | Semi-structured interviews with chief investigators (n = 21/31, including researchers and policy-makers) and funding partners (n = 5/5) named on the original grant; a total of 26 participants | Thematic analysis informed by research questions and guiding conceptual constructs on collaboration [43, 44]; NVivo 11 qualitative data management software [45] was used to support coding and analysis |
2. Interviews with members of the Centre’s research network | July–August 2017 | Semi-structured interviews with a representative purposive sample (selected by role and career stage) of PhD students, research officers/fellows and project leads, i.e. people involved in Centre research but not named on the original grant (n = 19); this was approximately 1/3 of the research network at that time | ||
3. Interviews with policy partners | June–July 2018 | Semi-structured interviews with policy-makers (n = 18) who self-nominated for follow-up having completed a brief online survey about engagement with the Centre; the survey was advertised on the Centre website and via the Centre newsletter; one policy-maker was excluded from interviews because they had recently taken a paid role with the Centre All interviewees gave informed consent; interviews were audio recorded, professionally transcribed and then checked for errors by the interviewers | ||
4. Partnership survey (a cross-sectional anonymous online survey) | June 2015 October 2016 August 2018 | To explore the Centre’s functioning according to partners (policy-makers, practitioners, researchers) and Centre staff; the survey covers perceptions of leadership, governance, resource allocation, collaboration and engagement | All Centre partners were invited to participate via personal email; survey hyperlinks were included in Centre e-newsletters and on its website; survey statements relating to aspects of the partnership were scored on a 7-point Likert scale from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’; participants were also asked to rate specified experiences of partnership and comment on what worked well and what might be improved; the baseline survey was completed by 50 people, follow-up 1 was completed by 97 and follow-up 2 by 59 people | Statistical analysis of closed questions by wave of survey and thematic categorisation of open-ended questions; further details about the analysis of survey data are provided in Additional file 4 |
5. Participant feedback on ‘systems thinking’ workshops | Routinely collected after each event since February 2017 | To elicit participants’ views of the functioning and value of events | Structured anonymous feedback forms completed by event attendees, including Centre partners and any other stakeholders who attended (n = 173 of approximately 230 attendees) | Descriptive statistical analysis and thematic categorisation of open-ended questions |
6. Routine process data about Centre activities, funding and growth | Continual | To record Centre inputs, reach and outputs, including how strategies are being implemented and any impacts | Collation of data from project reports, communication products/website access data, project outputs, meeting minutes, the Centre’s partner database, ‘feedback register’ and key performance indicators | Thematic categorisation of text data and descriptive analysis of quantitative data |