Summary
The Community Gardens' evaluation design included a qualitative and a
quantitative component
The qualitative component included document reviews of annual reports and
program promotional materials, participant observation at each of the seven
garden sites targeted for evaluation, and 47 semi-structured interviews with
program stakeholders (including gardeners, staff, volunteers, horticultural
educators, collaborators, and parents of youth gardeners).
The quantitative component included a posttest survey with 123 randomlyselected
gardeners and 123 matched comparison group participants.
Because the evaluation team was contracted after the gardening season was
already in progress, we were not able to develop an experimental or quasiexperimental
design-both which require pretests of intervention and
comparison group participants before program activities begin. We opted for
the next best choice and developed a posttest only design with program and
non-equivalent comparison groups. We selected the comparison
aggregates and individuals within these aggregates based on the salient
processes and traits we found among program clients, while completing our
qualitative component