Implementation of the “Saúde na Boa” intervention: process evaluation and characteristics of participants and dropouts

Abstract

School-based interventions have been evaluated to examine its implementation quality and to identify the characteristics of successful participants. The objective was to analyze the process evaluation of the “Saude na Boa” intervention and to test differences between successful participants and dropouts. Twenty schools were randomly selected to receive the intervention (n= 10) or the control (n= 10), in Recife-PE and Florianopolis-SC. The process evaluation was performed in the intervention schools using a checklist of items from five domains (knowledge, visibility, environment, Physical Education classes and extracurricular activities). The operational intervention quality was classified using the median score from each domain (median from 0.0 to 1.0= low, from 1.1 to 2.0= moderate, and from 2.1 to 3.0= high). Student characteristics were assessed at baseline (March 2006) and were compared between the participants who successfully completed the intervention (n= 989) and the dropouts (n= 1,166). We verified moderate to high operational quality of the intervention for knowledge (median= 2.0), fruit distribution and bike rack installation (median= 1.5), acquisition of materials (median= 3.0) and distribution of journals (median=2.0). Students who dropped out were significantly more frequent in male (47.8% vs. 40.3%), in student workers (49.2% vs. 44.2%), those who smoked (21.8% vs. 13.6%) and consumed alcoholic beverages (57.4% vs. 49.5%), and slept ?8 h/day (19.5% vs. 27.3%), than participants who did not drop out. Therefore, the “Saude na Boa” intervention was of moderate operational quality. Participants and dropout students differed according to their gender, work status and use of licit drugs.