Evaluation : a key component of all Apause programmes.

Questionnaires : See list of topics and questions. “Questionnaires”

Reports : Examples of reports “Reports”

Purposes : 
FIRST:       to allow schools to monitor their own Apause delivery and compare their results to others. 
SECOND: to facilitate development of the programme by seeing which parts work well or need attention.
THIRD:     to provide data for more formal evaluation by ourselves or external evaluation See “External evaluation” on “Reports” page.

Types :
Process evaluation: enables schools to see that the programme has beeen delivered.  Thus in the year 9 evaluations of the adult (Classic) and peer delivered modules students report on their perception as to whether the Apause Ground Rules were adhered to and were useful, whether they felt that they had had opportunities to participate and whether their views were taken serioulsly.
Impact evaluations for key stage 3 (KS3) and KS4: provide data on how valuable students had found their SRE, how much they had remembered on various topics and how much knowledge they had gained.
Outcome evaluations at KS3 and KS4: measure beliefs and behaviours of students allowing comparison with other Apause and NoApause  schools in relation to desired effects of the programme.  Key data includes measures of the correct belief that most students have not had intercourse by the age of 16, an important  belief in norms and behaviour change theories.  Ultimately we measure the proportion of students who have postponed first intercourse until after the time of the questionnaire in mid year 11 when the mean age of the cohort is 16 and for those who are sexually active whether they used appropriate protection against unplanned pregnancy and STIs at their first and/or most recent intercourse.

Access :
Evaluation is available to Apause members and is costed on a sliding scale.  The first questionnaire that generates a report is charged at a fixed fee which includes setting up the registration of the school for evaluation.  It includes  web based participation by a year group of students (unrestricted numbers) and a personalised report comparing results with other schools.  Further reports are charged at a reduced rate and additional individual modules for the complete year 11 report are much reduced in cost so that a complete year 11 report with all four modules costs only £175 in 2007/8.

Paper based Questionnaires :  are available for all reports but are considerably more labour intensive resulting in higher costs.