TOPIC

QUESTION

ANSWER

ACTIVITY QUERIES

What is active travel?

Active travel is any travel which involves activity by the person, e.g. cycling, walking, climbing, running, swimming, hiking, skiing. A passive traveller is the person who drives/is driven/transported to places.

What makes up physical activity?  Does this definition apply to Active England?

Any form of exercise or movement including walking, running, basketball, and other daily activities such as household chores, gardening or walking the dog.  However, for Active England exclude housework, gardening and walking the dog as they do not classify these as active recreation.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION GUIDE

Will the Monitoring and Evaluation Guide allow us to build a theoretical model for the future?

Yes in the future this is most likely. We will be able to see what would be reasonable to expect a project to deliver for a set input (funding).  In the future when Sport England staff are appraising projects they will know what is reasonable.  For a set input they will know what outputs and outcomes can be delivered.

Where do voluntarily run projects stand with the use of the toolkit? Is it not excessive to involve them?

Yes, it will be extra work for them, but we will make it as effortless as possible. It helps the projects to take part.  They need to know what progress they are making.  By analysing data they can decide to deliver a more targeted service.

Will the Guide allow us to identify skills employees are lacking?

No. That is not the reason of our learning zone.  The Guide has specific issues to consider related to KPI's. Our project visits may touch on these issues but projects will mostly have to address training needs themselves.

Will Electronic (or other forms) of Data Recording be an issue?

It shouldn't be an issue to transfer the information on to valuemapping, as long as we have access to all necessary information.  We will add information for some projects if it is not possible for them to do it.

How are the projects to define young people and adults?

Sport England define young people as people under the age of 16.  Adults are 16 years and above.

KPI'S

If Sport England is only partly funding a project, to what extent do they have a say in the KPI's used?

Accepting Active England funding means that projects agreed to supply data.  The extent that other project funders will control how projects collect data.  It will also depend on whether they are willing to work within our framework. During the 1-to-1's we will identify issues to reduce effort needed from the projects.

How do projects track other indicators?

It is up to individual projects to clarify the Sport England KPIs they wish to record.  There will be others of interest to the projects which are not part of the Sport England toolkit, so responsibility for data collection and evaluation of these extra KPIs will be the projects.  We will support them to include these in their Monitoring Framework and we will include them in the projects individual site within ValueMapping (the web enabled collection tool).

How often should projects be tracking KPIs?

Projects should have a clear monitoring framework.  This will outline where projects can source the information on KPIs.  It will show who is responsible and how often to record the data.  This will be different for each KPI and for each project.  These can be agreed and discussed at the 1-to-1 meetings.

What level of qualification does KPI Non-sports Qualifications include?  Is it just formal qualifications or can it be outcomes about lifestyle?

Any non-sport related qualification gained through the project is added in KPI Non-sports Qualifications, such as a First Aid qualification or a Lifesaving qualification or a basic ICT skills qualification.

What is a definition of KPI Coaches? And what projects would use this KPI?

KPI Coaches is the number of active coaches teaching at least once a year, and this includes coaches with no formal award.

Can you clarify a definition of KPI Jobs & Training? What types of jobs does it include?

KPI Jobs & Training is the number of people who go on to further education or better employment through working on the project.

How would you survey outdoor areas, such as open access parks?

Suggestions would include using a telephone booth for people to leave messages whenever they take part, the project could carry out regular surveys, or could leave a simple logbook.  The Action Learning Sets may pick up on issues like this.  The discussion forum on the website will also list some other approaches and ideas.

How do we weight KPI Sports Qualifications so one-day qualifications do not get same recognition as year courses?

Sport England do not weigh qualifications.  As long as they recognise the awards it does not matter.

Should we include KPI's that may become relevant later at the selection stage?

Yes, even if in the short term a KPI will not be recorded it should be selected.  The frequency of the measurement can be discussed at 1-to-1's with projects.  It will then be in ValueMapping for future use.

How do I collect KPI data, such as KPI Participation from sports clubs when I usually only deal with one representative from that club?

The simple solution is to give the representative a number of participation forms at the start of the session. You can collect these after the session. Hopefully the representative will have a registration list so each time they come they can let you know if they need more forms. This way there is less chance of double counting and burdening participants, as well as interrupting sessions.

PROJECTS

Why should we as a project get involved?

It is for your benefit and so not to be involved is to lose out potentially. Projects can use collected data and focus on their activity. They will be able to report to their boards and funders. They will have information that will justify their activity and provide evidence of impact. They will have more chance of continued funding and sustainability.

How will Sport England and Hall Aitken know if the figures we give you are correct?

We won't and they won't, but collecting and reporting inaccurate figures is a waste of time if you are looking for true results. We are trying to learn lessons here.  It is in each projects interest to be honest with itself!

Will Sport England penalise projects that don't achieve targets or fail to deliver large numbers of participants?

No, not by us, the regions or Sport England. Only if you are not delivering what you are funded to deliver or defrauding the system. Not if you are trying hard but failing.  We want to know about failure too so that we can learn from it.  It is only a failure if you don't learn from it.

How much time will we have to commit?

This must be in proportion to the funding allocated to the project.  For smaller revenue projects it will be unreasonable to expect too much from under resourced projects.  As stated above, it is in the projects' interest to monitor, analyse and take action.

How long do you expect us will to collect information for?

For the period of the Active England funding.  This means we can accurately check progress from start to finish rather than getting results for the early months of the project and losing track throughout the project's life.  We realise that many outcomes may become clear after the project has ended.

If we are a capital project only then what indicators will we use?  And what attribution will we make for future outcomes delivered by projects running within the facility?

We are working on a measured response to this question.

How do we credit wider outcomes to the work delivered by Active England?

It will be difficult to assign wider outcomes without talking to people, that is surveys and discussion forums.  'Deadweight' must be considered, which is when we consider what would have happened in any event.  If this can be taken away from the overall results it will tell us what added benefit the project achieved. (See Monitoring Guide).

Can projects make certain guesses, such as all school pupils are from postcodes in catchment area? Or should we survey each pupil?

It is likely that project staff will know the catchment area.  If 80% of people are from an area of socio-economic disadvantage then it is acceptable to count every one as being from that target group.  Regular surveys of users can check user type.

When can projects go to Rickter scale, video evaluation and innovation workshops?

All projects will receive the information pack by their regional contact in early April.  This will give details of workshops.  We will also add details on this website.

How much support is available from Hall Aitken Bearhunt?

There is support available in the form of the Monitoring Guide, as well as regional contacts.  There is also a website dedicated to Active England, with an FAQ sheet, discussion forum, as well as stories of other projects.  There is also support for ValueMapping from ValueMapping ambassadors.  There is however a limit to our support.  We encourage projects to record their own activity.  The information pack will outline our support.

Taster sessions, camps, trial memberships-which do we count as participation?

KPI Participants says that participation counts should be on the number of participants attending an activity and taking part.

Coaching - some coaches have no recognised awards, should this information be recorded internally?

No, the KPIs Coaches and Regular Coaching look at active coaches, including those with no qualifications and so this information may be incorporated into the project's KPI selection.

WEBSITE

Will the website be accessible to all?

At the moment this is the plan. We do not intend to password protect the site.

Will the website allow different projects to contact and support each other?

Yes, the website will have a searchable database. Projects can view brief project descriptions and access contact details. We will try to link projects.

VALUEMAPPING

How many people from each project can go on the value mapping training?

There is only the need for 1 or 2 people to attend the training as this is the maximum number who will have to add data into the system.  We will need staff to ensure that this knowledge is not lost to projects if people move on or are ill.  There is a limit to how many times we can train people to update the system.

If large projects have a lot more PI outside AE than smaller projects are they able to keep all these on the Value Mapping package?

Yes, these can be uploaded on to the ValueMapping site.  However the other KPIs will only be seen by the project and will not be networked with other projects.

How many value mapping sessions will be held in each region and how will these be split (by time)?

We expect there will be one ValueMapping session per region.  This is likely to be a half-day session.  One in the morning and one in the afternoon. There is a need to ensure that knowledge passes through the project to other staff or staff who will join for others later.

What is the ICT information for Value Mapping - any information that projects can give to IT departments to ensure it can get through Council firewalls?

Typically the only problems met relate to installing the necessary plugins on the client PC's (currently minimum of Shockwave 8.5).  A stand-alone installer for Shockwave is also available if necessary.  We do not expect any firewall issues using the ValueMapper product.  It runs inside the safe browser environment and only uses http/https connections to our on-line database. The file types downloaded to the browser are .dcr .cxt and .swf files.