ABSTRACT
Evaluating the health promoting school (HPS) and its effectiveness is crucial to its future development and sustainability. The research needs to be sound, relevant, to respond to the full array of elements that constitute the HPS, and to satisfy the criterion of utility. An examination of a range of research into the HPS reveals a variety of methodologies, focuses and decisions about what are to count as ‘results’. It is instructive to consider the research within a hierarchy of evidence in terms of the certainty it can be expected to give: about an initiative being the cause of change; about whether the results can be generalised (i.e. confirming that it will bring about the changes elsewhere); about whether it responds to the complexity of a holistic development like the HPS; and whether it is useful and informative to those working in the field.
