An instrument for reviewing the effectiveness of health education and health promotion.

It has been difficult to make a balanced appraisal of the effectiveness of an intervention in the area of health education/health promotion. This is mainly due to the different methods used for analyzing the effect studies. Therefore, the Netherlands Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, in cooperation with TNO Prevention and Health, has developed a review instrument which enables a standardized analysis of health education/health promotion effect studies to be conducted. The review instrument distinguishes eight themes, which are subdivided into total of 39 multiple-choice questions. Answering these questions yields insight not only into the methodological quality and the effect of a certain intervention, but also into the process by which this effect was achieved. During the development stages of the instrument many experts were consulted. It became clear that the instrument is a useful and manageable instrument for conducting reviews. Based on the information in these reviews we get more detailed insight into the effectiveness of health education/health promotion and into how it can be further improved.