Health Communication Evaluation

This week's presentation about evaluation of the Truth campaign made me think about my days as an internal evaluator for the California Smokers' Helpline. When I was an undergrad, I worked for 1-800-NO-BUTTS which is partnered with UCSD. My job was to call clients who had used the program at different time intervals (I think 6 and 12 months after using the service) in order to assess their satisfaction of the program and assess their current behaviors. Boy, this was a memorable learning experience about behavior change! I mean at times it was really hard to follow-up with clients and obtain their feedback if they had not been successful in quitting smoking. For some people, talking about their relapse and/or inability to reach or maintain the target behavior change was difficult and uncomfortable to do. On the other hand, those clients who did agree to participate in the 15 minute telephone survey provided valuable feedback for the program. A small monetary incentive (I think it was a $10 or $15 check) was also mailed to clients who completed the evaluation. Back then, I knew that the info we were collecting was valuable to improving the program. But now I realize that the info we obtained was applicable to process, impact, and outcome evaluation of the program.