Interactive Activity Book
Care Pathways and Outcomes Study
A longitudinal study exploring how children who entered care before the age of five were faring across different placement types in Northern Ireland. The research team developed bespoke creative tools — post boxes, sticker posters, and an illustrated activity book — to collect both quantitative and qualitative data from children aged 9–13, many of whom had additional needs. The study tracked participants over several years, eventually re-engaging them as young adults.
Interactive Activity Book
A multi-visit, hands-on approach that replaces clipboards and questionnaires with tactile warm-ups and a co-designed activity book — so participants lead the conversation, not the evaluator.
Phase 0: Logic Model & Topic Mapping
Identify the “Evaluation Gap” this method fills. It is best suited for working with children, young people, or vulnerable adults who would disengage from traditional surveys and feedback forms and evaluations that need both quantitative measures and rich qualitative stories but where participants feel intimidated by formal data collection.
Primary Objective
To collect honest, participant-led quantitative and qualitative data from people who would shut down, rush through, or disengage from standard evaluation tools — by giving them physical control over the process and removing the pressure of sustained eye contact and verbal disclosure.
Key Stakeholders
Service users (especially children, young people, neurodivergent participants, or anyone who finds formal evaluation intimidating), frontline practitioners, project evaluators, funders requiring evidence of lived experience, and advisory or co-design groups.
Reflective Planning Questions — Ask Yourself Before You Begin:
- “What are my participants likely to find intimidating, boring, or intrusive about a standard evaluation — and which of those barriers can a physical, hands-on tool remove?”
- “Do I have access to an advisory group or a small number of participants who can co-design the book’s content and activities before the main data collection begins?”
- “Am I collecting data across more than one visit — and if so, how can the first encounter build enough trust and familiarity to make deeper conversation possible later?”
Part 1: The DIY Step-by-Step Method
Co-Design the Tools with Your Audience
Before you make anything, consult the people closest to your participants. Work with advisory groups, advocacy organisations, or a small pilot group to decide what topics matter, what language to use, and what activities will land. This step is non-negotiable — if the book feels like something done to participants rather than with them, it will not work.
The Details:
- Action: Convene your advisory group and present the broad evaluation themes. Ask them to identify specific topics within each theme that matter to people like them. Use their words, not yours, to populate the book pages and tactile tools.
- Tip: Start with a blank or semi-blank template and let the group fill it in. A rough first draft co-created with five participants will always outperform a polished version designed by evaluators alone.
Build the First Encounter: Tactile Quantitative Tools
Your first visit is not the deep conversation. It is a low-pressure, low-verbal data collection session using physical tools — post boxes, sticker posters, or emoji walls — that let participants respond without having to speak to you directly or make eye contact. This builds familiarity with you and with the process, and it generates quantitative data at the same time.
The Details:
- Action — Post Boxes: Write each evaluation statement on a separate card. Set up two boxes labelled “Yes” and “No” (or use more nuanced options). Read each statement aloud, pause, and let participants post their card into the box of their choice. Collect and tally cards afterwards.
- Action — Sticker Posters: Create a laminated poster with numbered statements down one side. Give participants coloured stickers (e.g., green for “always true,” orange for “sometimes true,” red for “never true”). Read each statement, pause, and let them place their sticker. Laminating the poster means you can peel off the stickers and reuse it.
- Action — Emoji Wall: Print large emoji faces (happy, neutral, sad) and fix them to a wall. Read a statement aloud and ask participants to stand beneath the emoji that matches how they feel. Record where each person goes, then ask a simple follow-up: “Why did you go there?”
- Action — Community Map: Co-create a large illustrated poster showing places your participants recognise — a school, a bus stop, shops, a park, a police station, places of worship, a cinema, wherever they spend time. Print it at A0 or A3 size and laminate it. Give participants two colours of stickers (e.g., yellow for positive experience, red for negative experience). They place stickers on the locations, and you then work through the map together: “There are a lot of red stickers here — what happens in this place?” The map turns abstract questions about experience into a spatial, visual conversation grounded in real places.
- Tip: Start with a blank or semi-blank map template and let an advisory group populate the places first. Their version will include locations you would never think of. If you cannot laminate, print multiple copies — you will need a fresh one for each session or group.
- Tip: The whole point is that participants do not have to look at you, hand you something, or say anything out loud. The physical tool creates a buffer. Protect that buffer — do not hover, do not comment on choices in the moment.
Facilitate the Book-Guided Conversation
On your second visit, bring the activity book. Each page covers a different topic and contains a hands-on activity — circling items, placing names on concentric circles, drawing, sticking — that acts as a springboard for conversation. The book gives your participant something to look at, something to do with their hands, and full visibility of what is coming next. They lead. You follow.
The Details:
- Action: Sit beside (not opposite) the participant. Open the book together. Explain that every page is optional — they can skip anything they want by simply turning the page. Work through each activity, and after they complete it, ask open-ended follow-up questions about what they chose and why.
- Tip: The book is a conversation stimulus, not a data collection form. The real data comes from what participants say while doing the activity. Record or take detailed notes of the conversation — the book itself is secondary.
- Tip: If a participant is nervous, let them explore the book on their own terms first. Some will flip straight through it. Others will linger. Both are fine. The book dissipates fear because participants can see exactly what you are going to ask — there are no surprises.
Harvest and Process the Data
After each session, you have two kinds of data: physical artefacts (cards from post boxes, sticker positions on posters, completed book pages) and spoken data (notes or recordings from the conversations). Both need processing promptly — the physical data is perishable if you reuse tools, and the conversational details fade fast.
The Details:
- Action — Quantitative: Empty each post box and tally the yes/no splits per statement. Photograph or record each sticker poster before peeling off the stickers. Input all counts into a simple spreadsheet. This is manual, but it is straightforward.
- Action — Qualitative: Write up your notes or transcribe any recordings as soon as possible after the session. Use a framework approach: organise responses by the book’s page topics (each page becomes a theme) and look for patterns across participants.
- Tip: Keep the completed book pages as a visual reference when reviewing your notes — even if the pages themselves are not your primary data, they jog your memory of what the participant was doing when they said something important.
Part 2: The Realist Pathway
Evidence Manifest
Documenting how the Mechanism was verified through specific data collection.
| Evidence Type | What it Proves | Data Source |
|---|---|---|
| Behavioural Participant Control & Agency |
The book gave participants visible, tangible control over the evaluation process. They could see what was coming, skip pages freely, and choose their level of engagement — even in situations where external pressure to participate existed. This proves the mechanism of transferred control works in practice. | Facilitator observation across multiple sessions with children aged 9–13 in diverse placements and with varying additional needs. |
| Data Quality Volume and Depth of Responses |
The method produced enough quantitative and qualitative data across multiple life domains to support sustained, rigorous analysis. This proves the tools generate robust evaluation data, not just surface-level feedback. | Quantitative tallies from post boxes and sticker posters, plus notes and recordings from book-guided conversations, analysed using framework analysis. |
| Inclusivity Universal Participation Across Abilities |
Every participant could take part regardless of verbal ability, literacy level, confidence, or additional needs. The tools were easily adaptable in the moment — facilitators adjusted on the fly without changing the core method. This proves the approach removes barriers that standard evaluation tools create. | Facilitator reflections on working with neurodivergent children, children with learning difficulties, and participants with varying communication styles across multiple sessions. |
Don’t just write a boring report. Use the stuff you actually made during the session.
The Sticker Snapshot
Your sticker posters are already a visual data set. A photograph of each poster — with green, orange, and red stickers clustered around different statements — tells a story at a glance that no bar chart can match. Funders and stakeholders respond to visual evidence they can immediately read.
The Page-Turn Audit
Which book pages did participants skip? Which ones made them pause and talk for ten minutes? The pattern of engagement across your activity book pages is itself a finding — it tells you what your community cares about and what they are not ready to discuss.
The Quote-and-Doodle Pair
When a participant draws or sticks something on a book page and then says something powerful about it, you have a natural pairing: the visual artefact and the spoken insight. Together, they are far more compelling than either alone — especially when presenting to non-academic audiences.
The “One-Sentence” Report
“Because we used Interactive Activity Books, participants in our community felt safe and in control enough to share detailed, honest accounts of their lived experience that no survey would have captured.”