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How Can Evaluations of Public Communication Campaigns be of More Use to Social Change Efforts?
According to the authors, public communication campaigns are complex. "Many campaigns try to apply a strict casual evaluation which becomes a very difficult, if not impossible task." Evaluations tend to set up artificial controls and lack flexibility to change. Evaluations need to better reflect the real life settings in which public communication campaigns operate.
The authors call for a shift away from a causal evaluation paradigm to one of "social change." Social change evaluations, the authors claim, more closely track and assess a campaign's activities and interim results and link them to its ultimate goals. They not only look at what happened before and after the campaign, but also assess interim tactical progress so that it can feed data back into the programme to improve its chance of success. By linking the interim results to a campaign's longer-term goals, the evaluation can help campaign directors pinpoint areas that need to be improved as well as make informed judgments about its success.
The Evaluation Exchange VIII 3, Winter 2002; published by the Harvard Family Research Project.
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