title: Barriers and facilitators to evaluation of health policies and programs: Policymaker and researcher perspectives.
abstract: Our research sought to identify the barriers and facilitators experienced by policymakers and evaluation researchers in the critical early stages of establishing an evaluation of a policy or program. We sought to determine the immediate barriers experienced at the point of initiating or commissioning evaluations and how these relate to broader system factors previously identified in the literature. We undertook 17 semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of senior policymakers (n=9) and senior evaluation researchers (n=8) in Australia. Six themes were consistently raised by participants: political influence, funding, timeframes, a 'culture of evaluation', caution over anticipated results, and skills of policy agency staff. Participants also reflected on the dynamics of policy-researcher relationships including different motivations, physical and conceptual separation of the policy and researcher worlds, intellectual property concerns, and trust. We found that political and system factors act as macro level barriers to good evaluation practice that are manifested as time and funding constraints and contribute to organisational cultures that can come to fear evaluation. These factors then fed into meso and micro level factors. The dynamics of policy-researcher relationship provide a further challenge to evaluating government policies and programs.
authors.affiliation: Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney, Level 6 The Hub, Charles Perkins Centre D17, The University of Sydney NSW 2006, Australia; The Sax Institute, Level 13, Building 10, 235 Jones Street, Ultimo NSW 2007, Australia. Electronic address: carmen.huckelschneider@sydney.edu.au.
authors.forename: Carmen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Huckel Schneider
authors.affiliation: New South Wales Ministry of Health, 73 Miller St, North Sydney NSW 2060, Australia; Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, Edward Ford Building (A27), Fisher Road, University of Sydney NSW 2006, Australia. Electronic address: amila@doh.health.nsw.gov.au.
authors.forename: Andrew J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Milat
authors.affiliation: Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney, Level 6 The Hub, Charles Perkins Centre D17, The University of Sydney NSW 2006, Australia. Electronic address: gabriel.moore@saxinstitute.org.au.
authors.forename: Gabriel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Moore
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D006078:Government Programs / Q000458:organization & administration; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D011050:Policy Making; D011057:Politics; D015397:Program Evaluation / Q000379:methods*; D012108:Research Personnel / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: Health policy; Policy evaluation; Public health; Public health administration