Page 39 - Preventing Falls: How to Develop Community-based Fall Prevention Programs for Older Adults

EvALuATING YOur FALL PrEvENTION PrOGrAM

Examples of program effectiveness measures include:

Process measures • The effectiveness of dissemination and recruitment strategies,
Describes how your (e.g., number of possible participants contacted through
program is operating outreach programs)

• Fidelity to the model (e.g., whether sites are following the
program’s curriculum)

• Number of instructors trained

• Program attendance, (e.g., number of participants enrolled;
number who completed a program)

Outcome measures • Self-reported or observed improvement in participant’s health
Describes how your program status or functional ability
benefits the participants

Such measures can be used to demonstrate useful, not only to your own program,
the value of an organization’s work to the but to other community partners, similar
public, to other organizations, to funding organizations, and injury prevention programs.
agencies, and to the people it serves.
Evaluation methods
Goals This section provides information on how

Goal setting is a critical element in program you can conduct simple evaluations.
evaluation. Program goals should be However, some organizations may choose to
determined at the beginning of the planning hire an evaluation consultant. The document,
process so that arrangements can be made Demonstrating Your Program’s Worth,
to collect the appropriate data. Evaluation provides detailed information to help you
ends with a final assessment of how well the communicate with, hire, and supervise an
program met or is meeting its goals. Goals evaluation consultant. It is available at
also set the stage for defining measureable http://www.orau.gov/hsc/cdcynergy30/ba/
program objectives. The objectives describe Content/activeinformation/resources/Dypw-
the desired goals and what needs to be done feb.pdf
to achieve the goal. Many objectives are
often needed to address one goal.

If a program is well designed and well
run, evaluating the final results will be a
straightforward task of analyzing information
that was gathered while the program was
in operation. The results will be extremely

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