The Plan for undertaking the evaluation
Unified Sports is operating in 22 countries across Europe/Eurasia. We have identified five national programmes who have agreed to take part in the evaluation. They are: Poland, Hungary, Serbia, Ukraine and Germany.
Aims
The aims of the evaluation are:
- To evaluate the strengths of the Unified Sports as a model to promote the social inclusion of young people with intellectual disability within schools, community recreation programs and for employment opportunities, and as a means of creating social capital among all participants.
- To examine the contribution of different components of the programme which facilitate relationships between athletes and community members.
- To document barriers and facilitators to community integration within the cultural and social context in which each Program operates.
Evaluation Plan
We plan to recruit a research associate from a local university to partner us in gathering information within each country.
We will gather information from the National Co-ordinators about the development of Unified Sports within their country.
Then we plan to meet with the Teams. Details for doing this are given below.
We will share our findings with other countries and make a presentation about the evaluation at the European Game in Warsaw in 2010.
Plans for meeting the Teams
We will select two to three different locations in each participating country in which Unified Sports is operating.
- We will hold a one-day meeting in each location for all those Teams. For this, we will ask the co-ordinators of Unified Sports in each country to invite to this meeting:
- All coaches associated with the Teams (past and present).
- The athletes and partners;
- Family members or carers;
- People from the local community who have been involved with the Teams in some way.
- In the morning part of the meeting we will encourage people to talk about their experiences of the Unified Teams.
- In the afternoon we will interview selected people from all the groupings (around 10 in all) so that they can tell us their stories. (Some sports could also take place at this time.)
Lunch will be provided.
All the information we collect will be confidential to University personnel. No one will be identified in any reports. People attending the meeting will be asked to consent to their participation in the evaluation but they are free to stop at any time. This will not affect their participation in Special Olympics in any way.
The team meetings will take place during September 2009 and January 2010.
