Part 5: Evaluating and Moving Forward
A Guide for Custom Community Intervention Planning

 Key Points

Part 5: Evaluating and Moving Forward explains when and how to evaluate your intervention. It also shows how to incorporate your evaluation results into your ongoing program.

• Evaluation of any health promotion program is critical for a variety of reasons, most notably to measure the process of implementing the program, the impact of the program, and the overall outcome of the program.
• Evaluate after you choose your intervention strategy AND periodically as you implement your program.

 Why and When to Evaluate

Evaluation of any health promotion program is critical for a variety of reasons, most notably to measure the process of implementing the program, the impact of the program, and the overall outcome of the program.

As discussed in Planning Your Intervention the process of designing an environmental intervention follows the PRECEDE-PROCEED model, which has evaluation built systematically into the planning process. Another hallmark of this model is that it allows for adjustments in the plan to be made along the way so that the original goal can still be reached.

There are two primary points throughout this process where you will be evaluating data and trying to determine what this information tells you and what it means for your intervention (see diagram).

• Evaluation Point #1 will be once you have collected initial data which you will use to plan the actual intervention (at Steps #6 & #7 of "Steps to Plan an Environmental Assessment").
• Evaluation Point #2 will be at a pre-determined time period following the intervention. Again, you should plan for these evaluations at the outset of your planning process (at Step #10 of "Steps to Plan an Environmental Assessment").

Evaluation Point #1: Once you have collected data (from surveys, interviews, etc.) from your community of interest, you need to use this information to help determine an intervention strategy that will help reach your program goal.

Another outcome of collecting this data, however, could be that your original goal is just not possible in the community you are focusing on or with the resources you have.

• For example, if you are planning a neighborhood walking program and you interview people in the community, it is possible that you will need to take a different approach because people don't feel safe walking in the neighborhood. At this point you need to determine whether there is a way to address neighborhood safety, or if the group should focus their efforts instead on improving access to school gymnasiums after school is over.

Evaluation Point #2: This follows the implementation of your program at various times.

• For the same walking program, you will want to evaluate the number of people walking at three months following implementation, but maybe again at six months and one year. If the number of people walking never increases, or drops dramatically again after six months, perhaps you will need to revisit your strategy and determine why people aren't walking. You may also need to track seasonal changes in walking depending on weather changes.

 How to Evaluate

This table outlines evaluations you may do throughout your environmental intervention process. It uses the neighborhood walking program as an example.

Evaluation Type		Definition	Example
Process		Focuses on matters of implementation of the program, or how it is being carried out.	The network of parent volunteers was very unreliable, so an incentive program was put in place to ensure volunteers would fulfill their commitments to the program.
Impact		Assesses the immediate effect the program (or some aspect of it) has on target behaviors.	20% more students are walking to school 3 months after the start of the program.
Outcome		Measures health status and quality-of-life indicators determined in the earliest stages of the planning process.	6 months after implementation, students walking to school regularly lost an average of 5 pounds and report having more energy and feeling better.

As with any program that aims to change human behavior, even if the overall goal is to make the behavior change the easiest choice, planning, implementing and evaluating need to be a dynamic and continuous process. Something that works in the short-term, may not work in the long-term, and vice versa.

Next Step: Part 6: Case Studies

Last Update 1.11.06

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