Arts and Health Evaluation Toolkit

Introduction

The arts have demonstrated significant potential in improving health and well-being, with supportive findings across various contexts and applications. It remains crucial, however, to strengthen the evidence base to support the field’s progress. Formal evaluation plays a critical role in this process by ensuring the rigorous assessment of arts-based interventions. In this project, researchers will develop an Arts and Health Evaluation Toolkit to promote more rigorous evaluation of arts and health interventions, to enable more systematic assessment of interventions, allow meaningful comparisons across studies, and drive progress in the field.

Scope 

The Arts and Health Evaluation Toolkit will recommend a set of tools (e.g., validated scales) to evaluate the outcomes and impact of arts interventions on health, well-being, and social connection. The toolkit will provide conceptual information about different types of evaluation, an overview of relevant research/experimental designs for arts-based programs, and descriptions of qualitative and quantitative measures for a variety of relevant outcome measures. Modules within the toolkit will focus on sets of relevant outcome measures to the field of Arts and Health, such as Mental Health (including Depression and Anxiety), Quality of Life (including Quality of Life, Life Satisfaction, and Well-being), and Emotion and Mood (including Emotion, Mood, and Happiness). Tools to measure physiological responses will also briefly be discussed.

In addition to recommending tools for evaluating the impact of arts interventions, the resource will offer practical guidance, use cases, and an assessment of the strengths and limitations of each tool (such as cost, time to administer, and recall period). The overarching goal of the toolkit is to promote consistent and rigorous evaluation practices within the field of Arts and Health. 

Deliverables

A series of literature reviews will be conducted for relevant outcome measures (e.g., Mental Health, Quality of Life, Mood, etc) to identify canonical measurement tools in the medical and public health literature. A further investigation of the literature will examine the frequency of use of these tools across various arts domains. These reviews will be submitted as journal manuscripts, and will inform the Arts & Health Evaluation Toolkit digital resource, which will be released in Dec 2025. 

An interactive online workshop was held in October 2024 to share preliminary findings with the local arts and scientific communities, and gather feedback and suggestions for refining and tailoring the toolkit for the community’s needs. A final launch event will be held to disseminate the toolkit and provide guidance on its usage.

Project Team

Led by A/Prof Dr. Kathleen Agres (CMH, YSTCM, NUS), Co-Investigator Dr. Jean Liu, and Collaborator Dr. Nisha Sajnani, the research team consists of members from the Centre for Music and Health (CMH) at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore. 

Funding and Support

Support for this project was provided by the National Arts Council (Singapore), Tote Board (Singapore), and (from fall 2025) the National Heritage Board (Singapore).

Categories