CHECK: Using Collaboratives to Support Evaluation

Operators choosing to participate in collaborative efforts as part of their baseline program should consider those collaborative efforts as they evaluate the effectiveness of their public awareness program. That’s not new to RP 1162.

What is new? The RP better clarifies using collaborative surveys and research, gathering necessary data for an operator’s effectiveness evaluation. That could include:

  1. An operator could use an evaluation of the collaborative effort, typically conducted by the vendor, organization, or association behind the effort, to demonstrate how it helped meet their program objectives.
    1. The total stakeholder population for these collaborative evaluations is the sum of the stakeholder population of all participants in the collaborative effort.
    2. Survey data need only determine the effectiveness of the individual effort being evaluated; survey outcomes do not need to be segregated by the operator because the evaluation is specific to the outreach effort or program.
  2. A collaborative evaluation method (usually a survey) for operators, not part of larger collaborative efforts or programs, is used to conduct the necessary research for their effectiveness evaluations.
    1. Survey data, at a minimum, should be segregated by an operator because it will be used to evaluate separate public awareness programs conducted by individual operators.

Key to the decision to participate in any collaborative effort is whether it will help an individual operator meet the objectives of their written public awareness program.