Comments

Three Kinds of Research You Should Do Before Evaluation — 2 Comments

  1. This is an very clear explanation about objectives. I find in my work with nonprofits and advocacy organizations they often say, “we want to raise awareness.” I explain that raising awareness is not a tangible objective and is difficult to measure. The objective is that which would be achieved by the process of raising awareness. What impact do you want to have, what change are you seeking?

  2. Hi Gina.

    Thanks very much for commenting!

    I agree, that the ultimate objective is what might be achieved by raising awareness.

    However, I also see “raising awareness” as a valid objective. Though it is not a business objective, it is a communications objective. And it can be measured. You simply need to measure awareness among the target audience both before and after the program.

    In evaluation programs in which it is difficult to assess the affects of communication on the business objective (e.g., if you are doing public relations, direct mail, POS, pricing and a bunch of other things and sales go up it is not usually easy to assign how much of the sales increase was due to PR. If your management agrees, though, that the purpose of the PR was to increase awareness so that the target audience could move down the path to purchase, then measuring change in awareness would be a valid measure.