LEARNING

Our approach to evaluation

What works, for whom, under what circumstances and why?

Move More has established principles and values through which we want to stimulate change.  These have shifted attention away from purely focusing on ‘interventions’ that might drive participation in sports or exercise to the ways of working, distribution of power and the structural, environmental and cultural conditions that might help people become more active. 

Meaningful change takes time, and detecting and measuring change is challenging, but monitoring progress is essential. The Move More Index (below) will continue to inform the approach along with other credible national data sets.

Creating a learning mindset

It is important to understand what works and what doesn’t work and explore what factors helped or hindered progress. Reflection and learning will be embedded within every aspect of Move More activity. Fostering a learning mindset among the growing network of community groups, clubs, volunteers, facilities, venues and anchor organisations which will involve celebrating and sharing when things go well and learning and trying again when things go wrong.

Is the whole system approach working in Sheffield?

The ‘whole’ of the collective activity across the city, is far greater than the sum of its individual parts. At a system level, it is important to understand how the system, as a whole, is changing, what are effective ways of working, and how and why changes have happened. Accepting the complexity of this, an approach is needed that is adaptable to the changing landscape, and can be refined along the way. Academic partners at the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre will support the formulation of an appropriate framework for evaluating Move More as a whole system approach.

The Move More Index 

The Move More Index was originally developed by the Move More team and Sheffield City Council. It brought together many different physical activity indicators and grouped them into four key domains: Active People and Families, Active Environment, Communities of Interest and Physical Activity as Medicine.  These four domains are then combined to give an overall, composite Move More Index score.

More recently, on behalf of Move More, Yorkshire Sport Foundation have built on the previous work and collated the latest data and developed an updated More More Index.

The Move More Index is helpful in understanding a places physical activity story, it helps to create a rich understanding of all the different factors that influence activity levels, from the number of emergency hospital admissions due to falls, to the proportion of people who have access to woodland.

In Sheffield the Move More Index has deepened our understanding of key challenges and opportunities and this will continue to help shape our priorities.

You can find the Move More Index here: