Monitoring is about finding out what is working well and what isn’t working well. An effective monitoring approach will help you celebrate your success and help you improve your programme. This begins with collecting the right data and providing accurate information – and this means having the right measurement tool. The Ministry of Health wanted to ensure it was using a reliable set of measures to guide their approach with the Health Promoting Schools initiative.
Assessment of a self-assessment tool
In collaboration with our partners Cognition Education, Standard of Proof tested whether the Health Promoting Schools (HPS) school self-assessment tool was providing accurate indications of school health and wellbeing so that the school workforce can trust the results and make decisions about the next steps in their delivery approach.
We applied the Rasch measurement model to the evidence collected from the self-assessment tool. This technique provided a robust reflection of the tool, and provided useful modifications to the self-assessment – making sure it provided reliable evidence.
The analysis examined:
- Does the assessment tool have clear questions and response categories so it can provide reliable measures of all groups?
- Are the range of questions and response categories both easy enough to accommodate schools with low ability, and hard enough to accommodate schools with high ability?
- Are the scaled response categories able to provide accurate measures of growth over time?
Does the overall assessment tool provides a single measure of school health and wellbeing, which can reliably test any relationship with student achievement? - The results were presented to a national hui with the HPS workforce, and the findings are being used by the Working Group to further improve the value of the self-assessment tool for school communities.
