Developing a Feasible Survey for Community Organizations to Evaluate a Healthy Relationships Program
Abstract
For community-based organizations that work with vulnerable youth, evaluation measures and activities are important strategies for assessing a program’s impact on youth on different outcomes. However, rigorous program evaluation involving pretest-posttest measures and control trials are impractical to implement in community settings. It is critical for organizations to continuously measure programming efficacy, as it is an issue of accountability, ethical responsibility, and program improvement. Additionally, funders, policymakers, and stakeholders typically require organizations to monitor the effects of programming in their setting to continue receiving support. However, organizations conduct program evaluation under many constraints. There is an emergent need for a feasible tool for community organizations to collect data from their programs in an efficient yet effective manner that captures impactful information about program efficacy. The present study follows the development of a retrospective survey for community organizations to evaluate the Healthy Relationships Plus – Enhanced (HRP-E) program. The purpose of such a survey is to provide a measure for organizations to use so they can engage in ongoing program evaluation when more rigorous approaches are not feasible. An initial pool of items was generated based on HRP-E content and previous Fourth R surveys. Upon the development of the survey, nine experts were interviewed to gain their feedback on the draft. Interview transcripts from experts were coded and used for an inductive thematic analysis to organize, find patterns, and extract meaning from the interviews. Results discuss the major themes from the interviews and provide insight on important considerations for survey development in the context of research with community organizations and youth.