Raising awareness of the Sports Club for Health (SCforH) guidelines in the sports, higher education, and health promotion sectors: Evaluation of an educational online intervention in 34 European countries

Background: Sports Club for Health (SCforH) is among the largest European initiatives that promotes health through sports clubs.The recently developed SCforH online course has never been empirically evaluated.Objective: The aims of this study were to: (i) assess participant engagement in the course and course quality; and (ii) explore differences in the engagement levels and subjective assessments of course quality by stakeholder type, EU residency status, region of Europe, and prior awareness of SCforH guidelines.Methods:The study sample included 840 participants from 34 European countries, who attended the SCforH online course.Using web trigger events, we gathered information on the number of course parts completed and time in course.Course quality was assessed using the 12-item EDUcational Course Assessment TOOLkit (EDUCATOOL) post-course questionnaire, asking about participant's reaction, learning, behavioural intent, and expected outcomes, where scores on the evaluation components were expressed on a scale from 0 to 25 points.The overall evaluation score (0-100 points) was calculated as the sum of evaluation components.Results: The vast majority of participants (92%) completed all 28 parts of the course, and the median time in course was 27.60 min (95% confidence interval 26.93, 28.27).The medians of all evaluation components were ≥ 20.00, while the median overall evaluation score was 82.50 (95% confidence interval 81.11, 83.89).Some aspects of course quality were rated slightly lower by residents of EU countries (compared with residents of non-EU countries), participants from Western Europe (compared with Central and Eastern Europe), and students (compared with representatives of sports clubs and associations; p < .05for all).Conclusions: The level of participant engagement in the SCforH course and quality of the course are high, which demonstrates that this course is an adequate tool for dissemination of SCforH guidelines among various stakeholders in the European sports sector.