The personal and social impact of men’s sheds: A realist investigation, review and synthesis

Introduction: “Men’s Sheds” – environments where men spend time on utilitarian activities – are hailed as a health promotion exemplar. Despite the popularity of community-based sheds, there is a paucity of robust evidence to evaluate assumptions that men’s sheds enhance health and wellbeing. This thesis examines three men’s sheds to explore “what characteristics of men’s sheds enhance the health and wellbeing of men, in what circumstances, how and why?”.

Methods: A realist inquiry framework investigated programmes within “Context”, to ask what “Mechanisms” are acting to produce which “Outcomes”; represented as CMO configurations. This involved four distinct stages: first, tacit knowledge of Public Health, men’s shed support agencies and literature were used to generate initial programme theories (iPT); second, iPT were explored with literature and refined with primary realist investigation data from three case studies to produce refined programme theories (rPT); third, rPT were tested using realist reviews to formulate realist syntheses and tested programme theories (tPT); finally, tPT were linked to middle-range theories. Data was analysed retroductively; an iterative process moving between primary and secondary data.

Findings: Three tested programme theories explain which characteristics of men’s sheds enhance participant health and wellbeing, in what circumstances, how and why.