EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, August 2015
- Three reviews written to inform NICE community engagement guidance examine the evidence around the components of community engagement and the contribution of active content to health and social outcomes.
- Findings include
- More community engagement resulted in larger behavioural outcomes
- Community engagement which included bidirectional communication, collective decision making and training resulted in greater engagement.
- Effective components of community engagement generally include peer or lay delivery, but this alone was not enough to guarantee positive outcomes.
- Despite being a growing area, there is a lack of research around community engagement via online social media and online social networks. What evidence there suggests that very little co-creation of knowledge or building of social capital takes place (or is simply not reported) in evaluated health interventions.
- Community engagement is utilised within social media/social networking intervention delivery, but in delivery alone, not in design or evaluation, suggesting that very little co-creation of knowledge or building of social capital is occurring.
- There is a research gap in evaluations focused on children, those aged 30 to 40 years and on older people.
