A handbook for the evaluation of anti-doping education programmes

Summary

All public and publicly funded organizations not only need to be able to specify clear objectives, but are also expected, by their various stakeholders, to be able to demonstrate progress in relation to organizational objectives. For many of the more straightforward public policy goals valid and reliable quantitative measures are relatively easy to identify and apply. However, for organizations addressing more complex social problems which involve effecting behavioral change the challenge of evaluation is much greater. How do governments and sports organizations know that they are receiving value for money and how do the various anti-doping organizations know that they are having an impact on the problem?

It is these and related questions that this project addresses. The project is undertaken in the knowledge that for a social phenomenon as complex, persistent and secretive as doping there will be no simple formula for measuring value for money or impact of particular antidoping strategies such as education programs let alone a formula for identifying a clear causal relationship between a particular program and observed behavioral change. However, the absence of robust and easily collected data regarding impact should not result in an abandonment of attempts at program evaluation. The failure to take on the challenge of anti-doping policy evaluation allows the critics of the policy to argue that the absence of evidence equates to the absence of impact. With these caveats in mind the aims of this project were to: 

• Identify and examine strategies and techniques for assessing the impact of antidoping policy in general, but education policies and programs in particular.

• Prepare a set of guidelines, in the form of a handbook, which will enable anti-doping organizations (including NADOs, international federations and domestic sports organizations) to evaluate, as effectively as possible, the impact of their education policy and associated programs. The first aim was fulfilled primarily through a desk study designed to identify strategies and techniques used to evaluate anti-doping programs and those techniques used in similarly complex policy areas, and discussed in the academic literature, potentially applicable to anti-doping.

The second aim had two elements, the first of which was to provide anti-doping organizations with an evaluation handbook/‘tool kit’ which would include advice on what data to collect, how and when to collect them, and how to turn the data into management information (for the purposes of program improvement and also to enable accountability).

The "toolkit" was designed taking into account the wide range of potential users (differences in resources, knowledge and culture) and was progressive to the extent that it allowed for basic, intermediate and advanced assessments.

Results

The main outcome of the project was the drafting of a working document that stakeholders can use to facilitate the planning and evaluation of their educational programs.