Report by the RECOVEU Consortium (December 2016). RECOVEU: A participative approach to curriculum development for adults in addiction recovery across the European Union. Report for Deliverable 6.1: Evaluation Approach Review. EU Lifelong Learning Project. Project No. 538955-LLP-1-2013-UK-GRUNDTVIG-GMP.

The RECOVEU project brings together partners from the United Kingdom, Cyprus, Romania, Italy and Ireland with the aim of developing ‘Access to Learning’ resources for people in recovery from addiction.

A key factor in the project is the development of an Evaluation Toolkit, designed to support educators to assess the effectiveness of the ‘Access to Learning’ course materials and their impact, i.e. whether there are meaningful outcomes for participants: for example, an increase in self-efficacy for education and/or the contribution of learning activities to sustained participation in learning. The Evaluation Tools included in the Toolkit have been designed in a way to aid on-going evaluation of learning activities and are presented in the form of questionnaires to be completed by service users. Pre-existing tools have been utilised and new tools developed.

To support development of the Evaluation Tools, this Evaluation Approach Review:

1. Identifies and develops the theoretical base for evaluation (e.g. self-efficacy, self-esteem, and recovery capital).
2. Reviews current evaluation approaches used by partners that are relevant to both adult learning and addiction recovery interventions. This also includes assessing their effectiveness in this context.