Partnering for Impact: A Blueprint for Knowledge Translation Initiatives in the Canadian Sport Sector

ABSTRACT

Evaluation is an essential organizational practice in sport, but many organizations do not have adequate capacity to engage in evaluative work. To address this gap, academic researchers partnered with Canada’s Sport Information Resource Centre, a nationally serving nonprofit dedicated to knowledge translation in sport, to develop, deliver and evaluate a series of webinars and knowledge products (e.g. blog posts, videos) that aimed to build evaluation capacity among sport organizations. The initiative produced four webinars and 16 knowledge products that reached 753 sport stakeholders, with 86% of survey respondents reporting an increase in evaluation knowledge. Using the Knowledge to Action and RE-AIM frameworks, this paper provides a blueprint for higher education professionals seeking to co-develop, co-deliver and co-evaluate knowledge translation initiatives in partnership with nonprofit sport organizations in Canada.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge translation
• partnership
• evaluation
• sport
• webinar

Acknowledgement

This initiative would not have been possible without the valuable support and contributions of our research assistants (Mandisa Lau, Caroline Hummel), the SIRC staff (Kim Gurtler, Kamie Brookes, Peter Morrow, Mezi Tamrat), and our webinar panelists and blog contributors (Femke Hoekstra, Sarah Lawrason, Jenny Davey, Maji Shaikh, Marika Warner, Lucie Levesque, Brittany McBeath, Marco Di Buono, Nicholas Holt, Kathe Rogers, Shane Sweet, Véronique Pagé, Sophie Brassard, Patricia Demers).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under [Grant 611-2020-0247].