The McCaughey VicHealth Centre of Community Wellbeing, The University of Melbourne, Australia.
Health Promot J Austr. 2013 Apr;24(1):32-43. doi: 10.1071/HE12905.
Community and school cooking and gardening programs have recently increased internationally. However, despite promising indications, there is limited evidence of their effectiveness. This paper presents the evaluation framework and methods negotiated and developed to meet the information needs of all stakeholders for the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden (SAKG) program, a combined cooking and gardening program implemented in selectively funded primary schools across Australia.
The evaluation used multiple aligned theoretical frameworks and models, including a public health ecological approach, principles of effective health promotion and models of experiential learning. The evaluation is a non-randomised comparison of six schools receiving the program (intervention) and six comparison schools (all government-funded primary schools) in urban and rural areas of Victoria, Australia. A mixed-methods approach was used, relying on qualitative measures to understand changes in school cultures and the experiential impacts on children, families, teachers, parents and volunteers, and quantitative measures at baseline and 1 year follow up to provide supporting information regarding patterns of change.
The evaluation study design addressed the limitations of many existing evaluation studies of cooking or garden programs. The multistrand approach to the mixed methodology maintained the rigour of the respective methods and provided an opportunity to explore complexity in the findings. Limited sensitivity of some of the quantitative measures was identified, as well as the potential for bias in the coding of the open-ended questions.
The SAKG evaluation methodology will address the need for appropriate evaluation approaches for school-based kitchen garden programs. It demonstrates the feasibility of a meaningful, comprehensive evaluation of school-based programs and also demonstrates the central role qualitative methods can have in a mixed-method evaluation. So what? This paper contributes to debate about appropriate evaluation approaches to meet the information needs of all stakeholders and will support the sharing of measures and potential comparisons between program outcomes for comparable population groups and settings.
社区和学校烹饪和园艺项目在国际上最近有所增加。然而，尽管有希望的迹象，但它们的有效性证据有限。本文提出了评估框架和方法，这些方法是为了满足 Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden（SAKG）计划所有利益相关者的信息需求而协商和制定的，该计划是在澳大利亚选择性资助的小学实施的烹饪和园艺综合计划。
该评估使用了多个对齐的理论框架和模型，包括公共卫生生态学方法、有效的健康促进原则和体验式学习模型。该评估是对六所接受该计划（干预组）的学校和六所比较学校（所有政府资助的小学）的非随机比较，这些学校位于澳大利亚维多利亚州的城市和农村地区。采用混合方法，依赖定性措施来了解学校文化的变化以及对儿童、家庭、教师、家长和志愿者的体验影响，以及在基线和 1 年随访时使用定量措施提供有关变化模式的补充信息。
评估研究设计解决了许多现有烹饪或花园计划评估研究的局限性。混合方法的多线索方法保持了各自方法的严谨性，并为探索发现中的复杂性提供了机会。一些定量措施的敏感性有限，以及开放式问题编码中潜在的偏差。
SAKG 评估方法将满足对基于学校的菜园计划进行适当评估方法的需求。它展示了对基于学校的计划进行有意义、全面评估的可行性，也展示了定性方法在混合方法评估中可以发挥的核心作用。那么，这有什么意义呢？本文为满足所有利益相关者的信息需求提供了适当的评估方法的辩论做出了贡献，并将支持共享措施和类似人群和环境设置的计划结果之间的潜在比较。
