How to Evaluate Play Provision

This guide is for play providers, play funders and toy providers that need a practical framework for evaluating play-related provision. It explains how to move from understanding the intervention and existing data through to selecting outcomes, developing or choosing tools, designing the evaluation, sampling participants, collecting data, analysing findings and reporting results.

The guide is structured around the main stages of a play evaluation and shows how decisions at each stage should reflect the way play is actually delivered and experienced. It covers auditing existing information, selecting outcomes and indicators, tool design, evaluation design, sampling, data collection, analysis and reporting, with links to the Play Outcomes Framework and the accompanying data-collection guide.