Understanding your impact in peer support
Research has shown that peer support can improve many areas of people’s lives. So it’s worth evaluating your peer support project, to see what impact it's making. Find out how on this page.
People have different ideas about what the most important impacts are in peer support. Someone involved in giving and receiving peer support might have different ideas to someone who is providing funding.
This means that it can be difficult to know what to measure and how. However, it’s useful to understand the impact of what you do, as this will help you make improvements and share your successes.
This does not need to take a lot of time or resources. This page covers the 5 key steps to evaluating your peer support.
Step 1: What are you trying to achieve?
Most projects will achieve 2 different things. Outputs and outcomes.
- Outputs describe the things you do
- Outcomes are the things that change as a result of those activities
It’s important to collect and measure both of these things.
Output data is the simplest kind of data that can be collected. It’s useful for understanding the progress and reach of your project (for example, how many people you’ve supported).
However, output data does not provide direct evidence that anything has actually changed or whether you have been successful.
Your project may have an impact on different areas of a person’s life. For example, an employment skills peer support group might help to improve participants’ wellbeing, strengthen their social connections, improve their confidence, and help some to find new work.
However, it’s important to prioritise what you measure so that participants don’t have to complete too many questions. You should also ensure that you don’t measure things that are unlikely to change.
Example outputs
- Number of peer support sessions held
- Number of group members
Example outcomes
- People have improved wellbeing
- People feel more connected
Step 2: What tools will you use?
In the Side by Side research, the following areas of change were found to be significant for people taking part in peer support. It might be worth considering measuring some of these areas in your evaluation.
- Wellbeing.
- Hope for the future.
- Connections with others.
- Ability to make positive changes.
It might be easiest to design your own questions to measure the impact of your project. You could ask participants to rate an aspect of their progress (for example, being more connected or more able to look after their own mental wellbeing) on a scale of 1 to 5.
However, you may wish to use formal outcome tools or questionnaires that have been carefully developed and tested to reliably capture change for particular outcomes. They have the added benefit of producing results that are comparable with other projects that have also used the same questionnaire.
These tools often have names that sound like jargon, but their questions have been specifically tested to make them easy to understand for participants. The following links take you to some of the most widely used (free) tools for measuring outcomes relevant to peer support:
- Self esteem - Rosenberg self-esteem scale
- Social Connection - Multidimensional scale of perceived social support
- Wellbeing - The Warwick-Edinburgh mental wellbeing scale
You don’t need to ask people to complete lots of questions, or do any statistical analysis. Simply collect the average of people’s scores when they first started coming to your project, and then the average at a later point when there has been time for peer support to have an effect (for example, 3 or 6 months later). Then look to see whether the average has increased or decreased.
You may want to ask questions about people’s experience of peer support, as well as changes in how they’re feeling. This feedback can help to improve the support on offer. You can ask these questions face-to-face, individually or in a group, or through a paper-based or online survey.
You can also add some quotes from this feedback to a report to a funder as a way of bringing your outputs and outcomes data to life. However it’s important to make sure people have agreed that their words can be used, and be careful not to include any information that could identify someone without their explicit agreement.
Some example questions could include:
- Why did you choose to come to peer support?
- How would you describe the group to someone who has never been before?
- Would you recommend this group to someone who was feeling the same as you?
- What do you like best about this peer support group?
- If you could change one thing about the peer support group, what would it be?
Alongside statistical data, funders are often interested in learning about a project’s impact through case studies. You can tell the story of the group of one or more individuals, with people being identifiable or anonymous as they choose. These stories can powerfully illustrate changes in people’s lives in a way which is relatable to the audience.
Step 3: How will you collect your information?
When you’re measuring your impact, it’s important to carefully plan your approach from the beginning of the project. Work out the simplest and most practical way to collect that information before your project begins, so you’re not struggling to collect information once things have already started.
Here are some important factors to consider:
Why are you going to measure? It’s important to gain buy-in for measuring your impact from the group members at an early stage. Being clear about how you intend to use the evidence you collect will help with this.
Also, it’s a great way for people taking part in peer support to see potential gains made in their own health and wellbeing. Before collecting data, you’ll need to get all participants’ permission.
When are you going to measure? Measuring before and after an activity will give you strong evidence of change, but it’s not always possible. Instead, you could ask people at the end to reflect on whether something has changed.
How are you going to measure? You need to think about how you’re going to contact people, get the questionnaire to them, and make sure they return it. It’s often easiest to get people to complete questionnaires while they’re taking part in an activity, but this could be disruptive or time-consuming.
If you’re holding an individual or group discussion, how will you ask people to take part?
How much measurement do you need to do? How many different outcomes can you realistically measure? Do you need to include everybody involved in an activity? If you’re working with a small number of people, you should try to involve them all. If you’re working with a large number, you may want to select a sample.
Who is going to do the measurement? Will it be the person running the activity, another team member, or an independent person? Make sure the person you choose has the time and skills. It’s also important that they are trusted by your participants.
How will the information be stored? Where will you store the information that you collect? Remember to take particular care about data protection, particularly as rules tightened in May 2018 (General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR). If you’re collecting questionnaires on paper, will you need to enter this information into a computer? Who will do this and how long will it take?
Step 4: How will you interpret what you’ve found?
To understand what your data shows and learn from it, you’ll need to interpret it. All analysis – no matter how complex or simple – is about looking for patterns. For instance, you might look at the percentage of people who have shown an improvement as well as the average improvement shown. You may also want to compare data from different groups to see if you’re having a different impact on different groups – such as men and women or those who started early in the project compared to those who joined later.
Don’t be disappointed if you can’t see a big improvement in scores. Lots of things are happening in people’s lives aside from your project that can impact on their mental health, wellbeing, social connectedness or empowerment.
Interpreting your information does not need to be difficult, but it does take time. You must ensure that the time and resources needed for analysis are included in your project planning. You might be able to get help with this from universities, local voluntary sector organisations or other peer support groups who have experience of this.
Step 5: How will you share your learning with others?
One of the key benefits of measuring your impact is improving the work that you do. However, there will be others who will be interested in the things you have learnt. These will include your participants, your funder, other mental health organisations, etc.
Participants give their time to share their thoughts and experiences with you. It’s important to feed back the things you’ve learnt and how you will act on the results. This doesn’t have to be in the form of a written report. Some projects use coffee mornings or end of project celebration events to share their findings. These events can also be a good way of collecting ideas from participants about how to make further improvements.
Your impact measurement can play a key role in securing sustainable funding for your project. Therefore, it’s helpful to plan to produce some early findings before the end of your project. You can use these to show the value of the work you’re doing and help secure more resources.
