Evaluation

The role of evaluation in violence prevention

Many aspects of violence prevention are not presently evaluated and this makes it difficult to establish what works best. Evaluation allows service providers to assess the value, quality and impact of a service, programme or intervention, and determine whether it is having the intended impact.

Evaluation is a key element of delivering a public health approach to violence prevention. As organisations develop and deliver interventions aimed at preventing violence or addressing the associated risk factors, it is important to develop an evidence-base for that programme before making decisions on whether to scale it up or deliver it in other areas.

The Wales Violence Prevention Unit is committed to embedding evaluation into the services and projects that we commission and develop. This includes:

• Supporting our partners and commissioned service providers to develop and deliver their own evaluations;
• Drawing on the expertise of the Public Health team within the unit to conduct interventions internally; and,
• Investing in external evaluation providers to carry out independent evaluations;

Supporting our partners to develop and deliver evaluation

In collaboration with Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) Public Health Institute (PHI), we have developed an evaluation toolkit which includes information and resources for service providers to evaluate programmes and interventions that are targeted at preventing violence.

The toolkit is for intervention service providers in Wales and wider, to support our partners in properly evaluating their services to ensure they are having the greatest impact possible.

The toolkit includes:

You can access the toolkit and additional resources here:

Violence Prevention Evaluation Toolkit

Violence Prevention Indicators

Violence Prevention Evaluation Infographic

External Evaluation

Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) Public Health Institute (PHI) has been commissioned to carry out an independent evaluation of the Wales Violence Prevention Unit.

A first year evaluation (2019-2020) was carried out to capture our progress in establishing the Violence Prevention Unit in Wales, with consideration to the development and implementation of a public health approach to violence prevention.

You can read the reports here:

Evaluation of the Wales Violence Prevention Unit: Year 1 findings (2019/20) Full report

Evaluation of the Wales Violence Prevention Unit: Year 1 findings (2019/20) Executive Summary

We have now commissioned LJMU PHI to carry out a second year evaluation of the unit. This will include both impact and process evaluation, to assess:

• the whole systems approach to preventing violence, including programme development and implementation, and progress in meeting the targeted outcomes outlined in the logic model; and,
• the development and implementation of violence intelligence for prevention (routine violence monitoring).

The evaluation will draw on a mixed methods approach, including interviews and surveys with a systems lens, concept mapping, and network analysis.