Evaluation of active living by design: Implementation patterns across communities

Background: Twenty-five cross-sector, multidisciplinary community partnerships received funding through the Active Living by Design (ALbD) national program to design, plan, and implement innovative initiatives to support active living. Purpose: This paper examines implementation patterns across ALbD community partnerships related to community characteristics; preparation efforts; and policy, environmental, programmatic, and promotional strategies. Methods: Investigators used a mixed-methods, participatory evaluation design, triangulating multiple qualitative and quantitative data sources collected from 2007 to 2009. Configural frequency analysis facilitated detection of variables as well as configurations of variables occurring more (types) or less (anti-types) frequently than patterns expected by chance alone. Results: Overall, community partnerships with more preparation activities (assessment, sustainability) implemented a larger number of active living promotions, programs, policy influences, and physical projects, cumulatively (type). Yet, community partnerships working in communities with >40% of the population from a non-Caucasian racial and ethnic background and >40% of the population in poverty implemented fewer active living promotions, programs, policy influences, and physical projects, cumulatively (type). Conclusions: The resulting types and anti-types provide insight into patterns across communities that may be ascribed to varying configurations of community contexts, resources, and strategies implemented. Rigorous, systematic examination of the underlying causal structures related to the configurations of community characteristics, preparation efforts, and implementation strategies is needed.