Interest-holders' Experiences with Evaluating Health-Related Outcomes in Community-Campus Engagement Partnerships

Community–campus engagement partnerships are increasingly using program evaluation to examine health outcomes; however, little is known about how these evaluations are conducted or the barriers that partners face when implementing them. This exploratory study involved 21 semi-structured interviews with academic and community interest-holders in Canadian health-focused CCE partnerships, which were analyzed thematically. Most participants described relying on informal feedback or basic monitoring, with fewer instances of structured, theory-driven evaluation. Reported barriers emerged at four levels: individual/project (limited evaluation literacy, data quality and inclusion, late integration of evaluation), organizational (limited resources, lack of institutional commitment), partnership (fragmented data systems, power asymmetries), and systemic (funder constraints, methodological misalignment, attribution challenges). Findings indicate that the relational, iterative, and multi-actor nature of CCE can conflict with conventional evaluation models emphasizing standardized indicators or causal attribution. Practical strategies are proposed to support evaluation capacity building of CCE partnerships, along with priorities for future research, including the skills and supports needed for context-sensitive designs and the evaluation of health outcomes.