There has been growing attention to developing effective interventions to improve teachers' occupational health (Agyapong et al., 2022). As teaching is a highly demanding profession, a significant percentage of teachers experience high stress levels and report poor occupational health (Sandmeier et al., 2017). Two approaches to improving teachers' occupational health are discussed in practice and literature. In practice, so far, most interventions have addressed the individual's responsibility to deal with workplace-related demands (Cann et al., 2023). Another approach that, to date, has been applied to a somewhat limited extent and, hence, has been seldom evaluated by research are organizational health interventions (OHIs) (Dadaczynski et al., 2015). This approach concentrates on changing the structural and social factors of the work environment, such as workload, leadership behavior, and relationships between colleagues. As part of the intervention, these factors are identified, discussed, and redesigned in a collective process, which is organized and guided by external coaches and leadership.

Thus, an essential aspect of OHIs is employees' involvement and engagement in the intervention's implementation and change process. In public health literature, this process is referred to as stakeholder participation, which is "a conscious and intended effort made by individuals at a higher level in an organization to provide visible extra-role or role-expanding opportunities and enhanced control for individuals or groups at a lower level in the organization" (Nielsen & Randall, 2013, p. 605). In public health literature, stakeholder participation is vastly seen as a normative imperative, which implies that participation and, more specifically, a high level of involvement is preferable. This is argued on the grounds that a high level of participation ensures that the measurements meet the needs of the employees and, therefore, result in sustainable long-term changes (Rosskam, 2009). However, findings from public health research challenge this assumption. These findings indicate that a high level of participation does not necessarily result in better intervention outcomes and can sometimes lead to unintended adverse effects (Roodbari et al., 2022; Schelvis et al., 2016).

These inconsistent findings can partly be explained by the complexity and diversity of participation in OHIs. Participation can be realized in various forms and settings and different approaches are used by practitioners (Abildgaard et al., 2020). Understanding the diversity of participation can help to understand why some interventions fail while others succeed. So far, the complexity of different forms of participation has seldom been systematically described, partly because convincing analytical frameworks were missing (Marent et al., 2012). Abildgaard and colleagues (2020), therefore, suggest describing different forms of participation along four dimensions: content, process, directness, and goal. These dimensions capture stakeholders' impact on intervention objectives (content), on the organization of intervention activities (process), the degree of involvement (directness), and the underlying justifications and objectives driving participation (goal).

 The analytical perspective by Abildgaard et al. (2020) forms the theoretical framework for a qualitative study to identify and describe different forms of participation in an organizational health intervention in schools. The study addresses the following questions:

RQ1: How can the analytical framework proposed by Abildgaard et al. (2020) be applied to describe and understand different forms of participation in OHIs within school settings?

RQ2: Which forms of participation can be identified along the dimensions of content, process, directness, and goal in the schools? 

RQ3: What relationships can be observed between the organization of participation (process, directness), the actual participation of the stakeholders (content), and the objective of the participative process (goal)?

This study is part of a mixed-method longitudinal research project on the implementation of an organizational health intervention in schools in Switzerland. The intervention employs a tailored approach in which the needs of a school are identified by a staff survey. The survey provides immediate feedback to individuals on their results while also generating a report for each school or school unit. These results are then discussed in workshops with the whole school team, to interpret the results of the survey and to identify health-promoting measures. The workshops are led by school counsellors, who advise school leadership during the implementation of the intervention. The sample comprises six schools, varying according to size, type of school (education/special education), school level (primary, secondary, tertiary), and region. The first two cases involve two small primary schools in a rural area. In contrast, the third case is a large secondary school in an urban area, and the fourth, fifth, and sixth cases are a comprehensive school, a high school, and a special education school, respectively, all located in rural areas. The presentation will focus on selected data from the qualitative part of the project. Data was collected from October 2022 to March 2023, including observations of workshops and qualitative interviews. During the workshops, two to three members of the research team observed the organization of the workshops and stakeholders' participation. The observers wrote field notes, which were later transformed into protocols. Semi-structured qualitative interviews with school leadership and school counsellors were conducted to identify the goal of the participative process. The interviews were recorded with an audio device and transcribed verbatim. The protocols and transcripts were then embedded into MAXQDA and analyzed using qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2015). The categories were based on the framework by Abildgaard et al. (2020). New inductive subcategories were developed during the coding process. Following a multiple case-design and based on previously developed categories and subcategories, descriptive and analytical case summaries were composed to identify different forms of participation and their interrelationships for each case. To analyze whether these patterns were also identifiable across the cases, the case summaries were then structured as comparative summaries for a cross-case analysis.

• The study provides an in-depth insight into different forms of participation in organizational health interventions in schools. • The presentation will demonstrate how the framework of Abildgaard et al. (2020) can be applied to a systematic evaluation of participation in organizational health interventions in schools. • The study shows how participation in organizational health interventions in schools can be organized. It provides an overview of possible design options, their advantages and disadvantages, and critical guidelines that support school leaders or school counselors in optimizing participation design.

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