Perfect design or practical study? A workshop on navigating the challenges of community based prevention research

Subject: There is a shared interest among public health researchers in tackling methodological issues surrounding community based research, and on moving beyond a focus on individual level change. As part of a project on community empowerment funded by the People’s Health Trust, we have conducted a feasibility study on quantitative and economic evaluation of complex community-based interventions. To understand different quantitative methods that can be used to evaluate community empowerment interventions, we have undertaken a methodological literature review that identified the following sets of challenges: Defining population of interest – interventions taking place at a community level are not specifically targeted at a well-defined group of individuals. Therefore it is challenging to even find those who are affected by an intervention. Diverse and un-prescribed effects – the effect of community empowerment interventions are likely broad, suggesting we need to measure multiple outcomes in order to detect change. This increases the likelihood of detecting spurious change and can require a lot of resource. Furthermore, in many cases these outcomes are not pre-defined by a programme (i.e. communities choose their own foci).

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