A systematic review of studies evaluating Australian indigenous community development projects: the extent of community participation, their methodological quality and their outcomes

Mieke Snijder; Anthony Shakeshaft; Annemarie Wagemakers; Anne Stephens; Bianca Calabria

doi:10.1186/s12889-015-2514-7

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A systematic review of studies evaluating Australian indigenous community development projects: the extent of community participation, their methodological quality and their outcomes

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A systematic review of studies evaluating Australian indigenous community development projects: the extent of community participation, their methodological quality and their outcomes

Mieke Snijder, Anthony Shakeshaft, Annemarie Wagemakers, Anne Stephens and Bianca Calabria

BMC Public Health, Vol.15(1), pp.1-16

2015

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-2514-7

PMCID: PMC4655078

PMID: 26590869

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Abstract

Community development

Indigenous

Aboriginal

Torres Strait Islander

Health promotion

Community participation

Empowerment

Methodological quality

Qualitative

Quantitative

Background Community development is a health promotion approach identified as having great potential to improve Indigenous health, because of its potential for extensive community participation. There has been no systematic examination of the extent of community participation in community development projects and little analysis of their effectiveness. This systematic review aims to identify the extent of community participation in community development projects implemented in Australian Indigenous communities, critically appraise the qualitative and quantitative methods used in their evaluation, and summarise their outcomes. Methods Ten electronic peer-reviewed databases and two electronic grey literature databases were searched for relevant studies published between 1990 and 2015. The level of community participation and the methodological quality of the qualitative and quantitative components of the studies were assessed against standardised criteria. Results Thirty one evaluation studies of community development projects were identified. Community participation varied between different phases of project development, generally high during project implementation, but low during the evaluation phase. For the majority of studies, methodological quality was low and the methods were poorly described. Although positive qualitative or quantitative outcomes were reported in all studies, only two studies reported statistically significant outcomes. Discussion Partnerships between researchers, community members and service providers have great potential to improve methodological quality and community participation when research skills and community knowledge are integrated to design, implement and evaluate community development projects. Conclusion The methodological quality of studies evaluating Australian Indigenous community development projects is currently too weak to confidently determine the cost-effectiveness of community development projects in improving the health and wellbeing of Indigenous Australians. Higher quality studies evaluating community development projects would strengthen the evidence base.

Details

Title: A systematic review of studies evaluating Australian indigenous community development projects: the extent of community participation, their methodological quality and their outcomes
Authors: Mieke Snijder (Corresponding Author) - National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre
Anthony Shakeshaft - UNSW Sydney
Annemarie Wagemakers - Wageningen University & Research
Anne Stephens - James Cook University
Bianca Calabria - Australian National University
Publication details: BMC Public Health, Vol.15(1), pp.1-16
Publisher: BioMed Central Ltd.
Date published: 2015
DOI: 10.1186/s12889-015-2514-7
ISSN: 1471-2458
PMID: 26590869; PMC4655078
Copyright note: © 2015 Snijder et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated
Grant note: The authors gratefully acknowledge the NDARC Education Trustees for funding the PhD candidature of MS. We thank New South Wales Health for funding the Maldahnalanga project, of which this review is a part. We also gratefully acknowledge the Post-Doctoral Research funding from the Northern Research Futures Collaborative Research Network of ASt.
Organisation Unit: School of Health - Psychology
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991242155902621
Output Type: Journal article

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