The participation of seniors in political processes at district and state level has a long tradition in Hamburg. Bodies such as the district delegates’ assemblies, seniors’ advisory councils and the state seniors’ advisory council existed long before the Hamburg Seniors’ Participation Act was passed in 2012. The aim of the law was to secure what had already been achieved and to achieve further improvement and modernisation. The expectations that were linked to the law were laid down in the draft law. In an expert report, nexus examines the achievement of these individual goals of the law, which regulations have proven themselves in practice, which application difficulties there are and what the reasons for these difficulties are. The methodological approach chosen was the activating evaluation, which focuses on the potentials of the participants. It is characterised by a pronounced orientation towards process, resources and participation and explores what is positive and successful.
It perceives undesirable developments and deviations from the process planning and, through feedback, helps the actors to recognise these themselves and to develop strategies to avoid them. Other essential features of the activating evaluation are the inclusion of all relevant groups involved and the adaptation of the evaluation methods to the target groups. The core of the evaluation of the Hamburg Seniors’ Participation Act consists of qualitative interviews conducted as guided expert interviews. For this purpose, the guideline will be adapted to the specific contributions that the interview partners can make to the understanding and classification of the Seniors’ Participation Act. The recorded interviews will then be transcribed in a detailed protocol and made accessible for computer-assisted qualitative data analysis via the software ATLAS.ti. In addition, the reports of the district senior citizens’ advisory boards and the state senior citizens’ advisory board are also analysed. On the one hand, they are the basis for quantitative overviews in the evaluation report and are also used for the preparation of the interviews. In the report on the Hamburg Seniors’ Participation Act, a comparison is also made with the Seniors’ Participation Acts and seniors’ representations of other federal states.
Duration: 03/2017 – 06/2017
Client: Behörde für Gesundheit und Verbraucherschutz Hamburg
Team: Dr. Christine von Blanckenburg