Summary of Study Session 16

In Study Session 16, you have learned that:

1. You should be able to use evaluation to make a judgment about the health education activities that you have been using in your locality. It should enable you to identify any weaknesses, which should not be repeated, and strengths, which you can use in future health education activities.
2. There are three main categories of evaluation that you can use for your health education activities. Process evaluation deals with assessing how the health education activities have been conducted. In impact evaluation, the short-term or immediate effect of health education on people is assessed. These short-term changes include: changes in knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, skills and practice. In outcome evaluation, the long-term effect of health education is assessed usually after a number of years, and is done by external agencies.
3. There are several different types of data collection methods used in evaluation. These include observation, interviewing and focus group discussions.
4. Evaluation is usually considered to have six steps. These steps are involving those people who have participated in the health education activities, describing the activities being evaluated, selecting evaluation methods, gathering credible data, analysing the data, and finally learning from the evaluation findings.