Employees in sheltered workplaces face greater challenges in maintaining a healthy and vitality-enhancing lifestyle due to physical, mental and psychosocial disabilities. While workplace health and vitality programmes are particularly relevant for this group, evaluation of programmes in this setting remains limited. This paper presents a protocol for a realist evaluation of a sheltered workplace’s vitality programme aimed at physical, mental and social sources of vitality.

Using a multimethod design with adaptive qualitative methods, we developed an initial programme theory that describes how context and mechanisms of the sheltered workplace’s vitality programme influence the outcomes related to physical activity, healthy eating and social interaction. The protocol explains how we will collect and synthesise qualitative data, interviews, observations and focus group discussions, to refine and validate this initial programme theory and further evaluate the vitality programme. We aim to conduct at least 15 interviews, 15 observations, 3 focus group discussions and 1 final validating focus group. The study includes recipients of the intervention, namely individuals with varying work abilities, as well as other key stakeholders involved in the vitality programme. In this way, we will get insights into how to promote vitality-enhancing behaviours. Our context-sensitive methodology offers both scientific and practical value for future research in similar settings.

Ethical approval was granted through the Ethics Review Committee of Erasmus University Rotterdam (application number: ETH2324-0939). Findings will be disseminated through presentations, conferences, social media and peer-reviewed publications.