Title: Understanding the sustainable processes and impact of engaging young people in a peer-led dance group, the TR14ers
Funder: Department of Health and Social Care

Abstract: Children living in poorer neighbourhoods are twice as likely to suffer from poor physical and mental health compared with children from more wealthy areas. Behaviours linked to health learned as children often last into adulthood and so supporting children from all backgrounds to eat healthy diets and to be physically active is a key way to improve the health of the whole population in the future. Although there has been a lot of research about encouraging children to be more active, there is very little evidence to show the best ways to interest young people in physical activity or how to encourage them to stay physically active. Camborne is a town in West Cornwall with high levels of poverty and in the past it has also had high levels of antisocial behaviour. The Police found that arresting more and more young people did not reduce antisocial behaviour or tackle the causes of that behaviour, so they changed their response. When asked what it was like to live in the Camborne young people spoke of having nothing to do and said they felt embarrassment about their town. When the Police asked what they would like to do young people identified dance as an interesting activity. The first dance workshop was attended by 100 young people and over the last 13 years, over 1,000 young people have taken part in dance sessions. The group, the TR14ers, is now led by the young people and is a registered charity. It has recently received funding from BBC Children in Need to reach out to other groups and young people, and to develop its activities further. This will include providing training about nutrition and developing leadership qualifications. This research will look at how and why young people engage with the group. It will also ask what effect this has on their levels of physical activity, nutrition knowledge, self-belief and mental well-being. To begin with, we will work with the group to measure their physical activity over a week (using wearable devices which measure how active a person is every few seconds during the day and night) and diet, nutrition knowledge and emotional well-being as well as other health-related behaviours using questionnaires and other tools. We will also work closely with the group to develop an understanding of why they think young people get involved and what keeps them coming back to take part. The group already collect some information about who they have engaged and how long people have taken part; we hope that by working with them we can also help them further develop their systems for monitoring and evaluating their activities which will show the impact of the group over the short and long term. At the end of this first part of the research we hope to have enough information to develop a full scientific evaluation of the TR14ers including the impact of engaging other young people in their work. We think this research will help us and other researchers wanting to engage young people to support positive health behaviours as well as supporting public health practitioners to understand how best to engage and sustain participation in health promotion programmes.

Lay abstract: Research Question: To develop an understanding of the sustainable processes and impact of engaging young people in a peer-led dance group, the TR14ers? Background: Poor health clusters in economically disadvantaged communities and interventions aimed at improving population health sometimes widen rather than address health inequalities; There is a paucity of evidence for sustainable behaviour change programmes which engage and are effective across the socioeconomic spectrum. The TR14ers are a peer-led dance group which engages between 40-60 young people a week in dance in an area of high economic deprivation. The group has recently received funding to expand its activities, reach out to other groups of young people in surrounding towns and develop qualifications for leadership skills. Understanding how such groups, engage and sustain participation will provide much needed evidence for public health practice and research. Aims and objectives: The overall aim is to collect baseline data, including developing a theory of engagement to inform a full research proposal to evaluate the impact of this group on young people’s physical and emotional health. Objectives: i) Collect process data to understand how and why young people participate in the TR14ers ii) Co-develop a logic model which accurately captures the processes of engagement and participation in the group and hypothesised short- and long-term outcomes iii) Co-develop valid, feasible and acceptable methods for collecting baseline process and outcome data on a sufficient number of TR14ers iv) Co-develop a full evaluation proposal, including identifying counterfactuals and routinely collected datasets for comparison Methods: This project will take an engaged research approach to co-design and collect baseline data (objectively measured physical activity; nutrition knowledge; health behaviours) as well as process data to inform a full evaluation of the TR14ers. The methods reflect the complexity informed development of the Group as an intervention within a number of social systems. Throughout the six months a series of activities will be undertaken to develop an understanding of the mechanisms and potential outcomes of the TR14ers and address the uncertainties around the viability of an evaluation. The overall approach of the project is an evaluability assessment; a method widely advocated for the development of better and more informative evaluation of public health interventions, and complex interventions in particular. Timelines for delivery: This research will be delivered over six months. Researchers will attend the weekly TR14ers sessions; hold workshops in the half-term holidays; conduct interviews and co-develop a proposal for a full evaluation. Anticipated impact and dissemination: The main outcome of this project is the co-creation of a full evaluation of the processes and impact of participation in the TR14ers. The findings will be shared with the TR14ers and their parents/ carers and interpretations of the findings negotiated with the young people. We will seek to publish the refined logic model including the process of its co-creation. We will continue to engage public health practitioners in the research process, including the protocol for the full evaluation and provide support for capturing evidence from complex system interventions such as the TR14ers.

Research activity codes: 3.1 PRIMARY PREVENTION INTERVENTIONS TO MODIFY BEHAVIOURS OR PROMOTE WELL-BEING
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE