Chronicle Workshops as Data Collection Method in Evaluation of National Work Environment Intervention

Abstract

When evaluating national work environment initiatives, it is important to choose methods through which it is possible to gather necessary and relevant information in a time efficient way for researchers and involved organisations. This article evaluates the usefulness of chronicle workshops as a data collection method to help assess the effectiveness of national work environment initiatives aiming to create interventions in organisations. Chronicle Workshops were used as one of three methods in case studies evaluating a national guideline on moving and handling people. Chronicle workshops were found to be an efficient method to identify specific interventions, when they occurred, who had been instrumental in implementing them, what contextual factors had influenced the intervention and factors facilitating and hindering intervention. They lacked specificity on individual strategies and why these did or did not work. Thus Chronicle workshops are good at creating an overview of implementation efforts but need to be supplemented with other methods to gain more detailed information.