pink-book

Assessing Effectiveness
and Making Refinements
In This Section:
• Why outcome evaluation is important
• Revising the outcome evaluation plan you wrote during Stage 1
• Conducting the assessment
• Refining the health communication program
• Common myths and misperceptions about evaluation
Questions to Ask and Answer:
• How can we use outcome evaluation to assess the effectiveness
of our program
• How do we decide what outcome evaluation methods to use
• How should we use our evaluation results
• How can we determine to what degree we have achieved our
communication objectives
• How can we make our communication program more effective
In Stage 3, you decided how to use process evaluation to monitor
and adjust your communication activities to meet objectives. In
Stage 4, you will use the outcome evaluation plan developed in
Stage 1 to identify what changes (e.g., in knowledge, attitudes, or
behavior) did or did not occur as a result of the program. Together, the
progress and outcome evaluations will tell you how the program is
functioning and why. (If you combine information from the two types of
evaluation, be sure that you focus on the same aspects of the program,
even though you look at them from different perspectives.) This section
will help you revise your plans and conduct outcome evaluation. You
should begin planning assessment activities either before or soon after
you launch the program.
STAGE 4