5.0 Capturing the Benefits of Arts & Cultural Participation for (Mental) Wellbeing: some answers to the questions posed at the outset of this review

If the preceding discussion tells us anything, it is that there are potentially as many ways of attempting to evaluate arts and cultural interventions aimed at supporting participants’ mental wellbeing as there are novel projects and interventions to deliver. It is useful to look back at the questions set posed at the outset of this review and, consider how the foregoing assists us in attempting to answer them.

• What measures, particularly standardised, are commonly used to gauge wellbeing in projects focussed on arts, culture and mental health?

• A variety of standardised measures are available. They vary in terms of length though many are reasonably short (the longer version of WEMWBS – for example – comprises 14 items. The ONS4 comprises only 4 items though few examples of its use were uncovered for this review).

• The availability of such tools does not guarantee that intervention participants will fill them in, some may find engaging with validated tools intrusive and irksome no matter how carefully their design has been considered.

• Such tools are designed to be administered at least twice (start and endpoint/ post-endpoint of project) to give an indication of distance travelled.

• Such tools – appropriately administered - will only evidence certain aspects of the wellbeing journey experienced by project participants. It is likely good practice to team the use of a validated tool with the collection of qualitative feedback (interview, focus group, written responses) to address these gaps.

• Small scale projects may have difficulty demonstrating that the needle has moved using validated scales; data collection focussed on narrative responses may be far more suitable.

• If the project is short – only running for a few sessions or weeks – standardised tools are unlikely to be appropriate.

• What are the pitfalls/ challenges or examples of great practice?

• Studies examining the efficacy of evaluation approaches undertaken in this space note that effective evaluation is often challenging, both knowledge and available resource can be tricky issues.

• The existence of validated scales etc. does not guarantee that project participants will be willing to – or enthusiastic about – completion.

• Depending on an intervention’s target group, achieving meaningful compliance to utilise validated scales effectively can be challenging.

• Pairing an appropriately administered validated scale with collection of narrative feedback on the value of participation in the project is advisable.

• Several studies reviewed use more than one validated scale (alongside other tools), it is not clear that this is an advantageous approach.

• What, if anything, can we learn about proportional/appropriate application of tools?

• The use of an appropriately applied validated scale tool can provide a lot of useful information but there will be gaps.

• It is advisable to make use of a validate tool in tandem with collection of narrative/qualitative feedback.

• Some projects have attempted to generate SROI and ROI values as part of their evaluation.33 The meaningfulness of these figures (particularly with regard to mental wellbeing) can be questioned (see, for example: APPG, 2017).

• SROI and ROI data should be collected at significant scale if it is to be meaningful, it is unlikely to be appropriate for mid or small-scale projects.

• What, if anything, can we learn about data collection methods - and issues – i.e. collecting data from young people?

• Data collection can be challenging, this is particularly so among vulnerable groups who may engage inconsistently or, find filling in questionnaires etc. stressful and/or intrusive.

• Evaluation should be planned into a project from the outset, this is particularly true if the use of a validated scale is proposed as it should be administered at least twice in order to demonstrate distance travelled.

• Narrative/ qualitative data is a valid approach to collecting meaningful wellbeing data and its utility should not be disregarded.

33 For examples: https://www.transportedart.com/about/evaluation/

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