Evaluation and Monitoring

There are a number of different options for evaluation.

Much of the research carried out by the Bangor Food and Activity Research Unit employed observational measures of each child’s individual consumption of fruit and vegetables before, during and after the Programme had been introduced. Whilst this is a time-consuming and somewhat costly exercise, it does yield an objective and quantitative measure of the effectiveness of the Programme.

"This is an excellent example of how our promotion efforts can make a real difference to the long-term health of our citizens. It's just the sort of thing I want to build on when we make our proposals to reform our fruit and vegetable market."

Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development

Simpler measures suitable for a large number of schools are provided by questionnaires or food diaries.

The Bangor Food and Activity Research Unit are currently developing a 1-day diary (the “DIET-24: 24hr dietary intake evaluation tool”) to assess food intake in children and parents that may be used in large-scale evaluations of the Food Dudes Programme.

We have also developed short questionnaires for parents, teachers and in-school co-ordinators to assess the perceived impact of the Programme.

For comparative purposes, it is very useful to simultaneously measure fruit and vegetable consumption in control schools. These schools would receive additional provision of fruit and vegetables as in the intervention schools, but they would not run the Food Dudes Programme.

Formative evaluation, through interviews or focus groups, is another means of determining the acceptability of the Programme to its target audience.