Preventing violence: evaluating outcomes of parenting programmes

This document is a product of the Parenting Project Group, a project group of the World Health Organization’s Violence Prevention Alliance, funded by the UBS Optimus Foundation.

This document seeks to increase understanding of the need for, and the process of, conducting outcome evaluations of parenting programmes in low- and middle-income countries. Parenting programmes to prevent violence usually take the shape of either individual or group-based parenting support. These programmes aim to prevent child maltreatment by improving parenting skills, increasing parents’ understanding of child development and encouraging the use of positive discipline strategies.

The report is made up of three main sections:

• Section 1 defines outcome evaluations, explains why they are important and counters some of the oft-encountered justifications for not doing them.
• Section 2 reviews the evidence for the effectiveness of parenting programmes to prevent violence, discusses adapting parenting programmes to other cultures, and identifies some of the main features of effective programmes.
• Section 3 describes the activities that need to be completed before an evaluation can be carried out and the six steps of the evaluation process.