TOPIC: Strategies and Ethics

As the director of the local public health department, you are preparing to conduct a town hall presentation. In it you will communicate the direction of the strategic plan. Your audience will include collaborative partners (invested stakeholders) such as academicians, health professionals, state health department staff, representatives from affected communities, and representatives from nongovernmental organizations.

Recall that your Stakeholder Involvement in Evaluation Planning discussion in Unit 5 reviewed the planning and evaluation cycle (Figure 11-1 in your textbook). In addition, in that discussion you explained where in the cycle and how you would seek stakeholder involvement in evaluation planning. The town hall presentation is one such opportunity to do so.

For this ASSIGN, do the following:

Identify the two specific strategies you described in the Stakeholder Involvement in Evaluation Planning discussion in Unit 5 to obtain active involvement in the development of an evaluation plan.

Align these strategies, and specifically name the types of stakeholders (for example, academicians, health professionals, state health department staff, representatives from affected communities, representatives from nongovernmental organizations, et cetera) who would be actively engaged in them.

Identify the likely assumptions of the named stakeholders regarding the health of the community.

Discuss how you can address these assumptions to ensure that feedback loops remain effective.

Include THREE academic references above 2017

PART 2

Do you agree with the assumptions identified? Dig a bit deeper and conjecture what assumptions may hold that underlie the statements made.

Conclude by stating how the assumptions you has identified and/or held are related to community health outcomes. In other words, how do perceptions/health beliefs affect health?

Below is FIGURE 11-1 ON PAGE 265

In the daily work of implementing a program, evaluation of intervention effects can seem like a luxury. The reality is that conducting an evaluation whose purpose is to identify whether the intervention had an effect requires considerable forethought regarding a broad range of issues, each of which has the potential to detract seriously from the credibility of the evaluation.

The intervention effect evaluation deserves the same degree of attention during program planning as does development of the program interventions; ideally, it should be designed concurrently with the program. All too often, attention is focused on developing the evaluation only after the goals and objectives are finalized and the program is up and running. Well-articulated program outcome goals and outcome objectives facilitate development of the evaluation, but insights about the program process can be gained from developing an evaluation plan.

As highlighted in the planning and evaluation cycle (FIGURE 11-1), the planning and decisions about the effect evaluation should occur as the program is being developed.

FIGURE 11-1 Planning and Evaluation Cycle, with Effect Evaluation Highlights

The contents of this chapter address the broad areas of data collection and evaluation rigor within the context of the program theory and feasibility considerations. The information presented on designs and sampling is not intended to duplicate the extensive treatment of research methods and statistics provided in research textbooks. Instead, basic research content is presented as the background for the problems commonly encountered in conducting a health program evaluation, and practical suggestions are provided for minimizing those problems. Because the focus here is on practical solutions to real problems, the suggestions offered in this chapter may differ from those usually found in research and statistics textbooks. Nonetheless, good research methods and statistics textbooks are invaluable resources and references that should be on the bookshelf of every program evaluator.

Planning the evaluation begins with selecting the evaluation questions and then developing the details of the evaluation implementation plan, similar to the details of the program organization plan. Aspects of the evaluation plan related to data collection—namely, levels of measurement and levels of analysis, as well as techniques to collect data—are discussed next. These elements of evaluations are closely aligned with research methodology, and achieving scientific rigor is the first yardstick used when planning the intervention effect evaluation.

Part-2

Addressing the following:

Identify one of the four criteria from your reading above for developing a good evaluation question.

In thinking about stakeholder involvement in this process, discuss the relationship between this criterion and cross-culturally appropriate instrument development. That is, what are the benefits of a culturally appropriate evaluation question and plan? What are the detriments when the question and plan are not culturally appropriate?