Comparison of internal and external evaluation of workplace health promotion programs in volunteer organizations in Tehran

The first step in planning a workplace health promotion program is needs assessment or determining the current situation. There are two dominant approaches in evaluating a program, one is the evaluation by the presenters of the program, which is called internal evaluation, and the other one is program evaluation by peers or external evaluation. The purpose of this study is to assess the status of workplace health promotion through internal and external evaluation in volunteer organizations in Tehran.

The present study is a cross-sectional study conducted on 30 volunteer organizations in Tehran in 2019. Data were collected using a standard workplace health situation assessment tool including 9 domains, 30 levels, and 85 questions. EXCEL, the 22nd version of SPSS software, and paired t-test were used for data analysis.

 Data analysis using paired t-test indicates that the mean difference between internal and external evaluation in industrial organizations was 175.071 with standard deviation=116.043 and P<0.05 which is significant. The mean difference between the internal and external evaluation in non-industrial organizations was 43 with a standard deviation=173.775 and P=0.338 which is not significant and only in two domains of social environment of workplace and providing services had a significant mean difference between internal and external evaluation.

 The results indicated that the organizations health professionals do not have the necessary information about the concepts of health promotion, most officials try to show the performance of their organization above its actual level in internal evaluation.