Immunization and child health materials development guide pdf

Step 8. Evaluate Materials
A thorough evaluation will help you determine whether your materials got to the right people
and how your materials made a difference. Although evaluation can be a bit intimidating, it
can also be affirming and exciting. It reveals strengths and weaknesses in your materials, and
it gives you good, constructive feedback on your messages, your audience, the media you
selected, and your pretesting techniques. It can also prove to managers that their money was
well spent.
A. Evaluation Methods
Materials can be evaluated in many ways. Some methods will help you measure how well the
materials were distributed, and some measure comprehension and acceptability. Following
are several evaluation methods you can use alone or in combination with each other before
coming to conclusions about your materials development program.
1. Interview Audience Members. Going back to your original audience screening
questionnaires, you can seek out members of your audience and interview them about the
materials, the messages, and whether the materials got to the right people. Depending on the
topic, type, and purpose of the material, it might also be useful to interview people outside
your main audience. For example, you might want to know how the general public perceived
your radio campaign introducing a newly available vaccine.
• Conduct intercept interviews with clients or potential clients outside the clinic setting to
find out whether they saw the material. Ask if they can recall what it said and whether it
made them change their behavior.
• Hold group discussions to obtain feedback on materials from audience members, from
trainers, and from other people along the distribution chain. You can use Appendices 9
and 10—examples of questions to be used when pretesting print, radio, and video
materials— for evaluation.
• Conduct a telephone or written survey to evaluate an intervention. Pre- and post-surveys
measure the impact an intervention has had on an individual’s knowledge, attitudes,
and practices.
• Arrange listening and viewing panels for community leaders to report on their own and
others’ reactions to radio and video programs.
• Ask policymakers if the material answered their questions or helped strengthen their
positions.
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