Ribbon Evaluation Results
The Ribbon

Thanks to the over 400 of you who returned your Ribbon evaluation form, sent out in May 2005 to over 2,800 recipients. While we will be furthering analyzing the data and determining in the near future whether any changes will be made as a result, we wanted to take this opportunity to let readers know the basics of what we found out. We have a lot of good feedback to work with as a result of this project.

Who were the respondents?

You may recall that we wanted to learn a bit about the age, education level and other aspects of our readers. About two-thirds of respondents were between the ages of 46 and 65. Respondents tended to have a high level of education, with much more than half (57%) having earned a master's degree or Ph.D.

We asked, "what describes you best?" and offered descriptors of who we thought readers may be, professionally and in terms of their relationship to the cancer experience. These choices were based on a previous survey of Ribbon readership, as well as other BCERF programming and evaluation experiences. Respondents could select as many categories as applied. 286 respondents described themselves as either a friend or family member of a cancer patient; 89 as survivors and 66 as activists. Professionally, the categories with the largest number of respondents were government/policy employee, educator (not Extension), healthcare provider, scientist, environmental advocate, homemaker, and Cooperative Extension educator.

Content and Format

We asked you to rate, on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being the strongest agreement), several aspects of the content and format of our newsletter. In response to whether regular reading of The Ribbon results in your increased understanding of research findings, we found the following averages, according to themes:

Cancer and the environment: 4.3

How environmental chemicals may be related to cancer risk: 4.4

Genetics and cancer risk: 4.1

How diet and lifestyle may be related to cancer risk: 4.2

Regular reading of The Ribbon helped respondents:

Use information about cancer and the environment in their work: 3.9

Identify ways to reduce their cancer risk: 3.9

Work with community or professional groups to identify strategies to reduce cancer risk: 3.5

Regarding the format of The Ribbon, average response about the appropriateness of the length of articles was 4.1, whether the pictures and charts help understanding, 4.3, and the readability of the size and style of print, 4.3.

Features and Topics

We listed general features and recent topics/titles from the newsletter, and, using the same scale mentioned above, asked whether these were important to you. While all general features received an average over 3.5, the strongest features were overviews of current national epidemiologic studies and Research Commentaries. All topics/titles also received over a 3.5 average, with the strongest being "Genetic-Environment Interactions and Breast Cancer Risk" and "Antibiotics and Breast Cancer Risk." Features on the Agricultural Health Study and the Sister Study were also high.

What else?

We asked readers whether the level of Ribbon articles was appropriate. When asked if it was "too simplistic,"somewhat simplistic," "appropriate," "challenging," or "too complex," respondents overwhelmingly said it was "appropriate." For this question in particular we will need to take into account the high education level of most respondents. BCERF may need to consider other ways to determine how we are meeting the needs of less educated populations, on this and other questions.

We will carefully consider responses received to the question: what other cancer topics would you like to see addressed in our newsletter? Responses consisted mostly of specific cancers such as colon, skin, blood, cervical and lung, and also the topic of cancer clusters.

We thank you for all your additional comments and we greatly appreciate the enthusiasm with which you responded. We welcome your feedback at any time. Contact the editor at (607) 255-1185 or cso1@cornell.edu

Back to the top

Ribbon Evaluation Results The Ribbon

Ribbon Evaluation Results
The Ribbon