Evaluation: Quantitative Methods

To evaluate something is to examine or assess its value or usefulness. For example, many health communication experts develop messages or interventions in an effort to change an intended audience's beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors regarding an important health issue. They then implement the intervention (e.g., show it to members of the intended audience), and evaluate what effect, if any, the intervention had on these individuals. Evaluating a health communication intervention before, during, and after implementation can provide important information about the success or failure of the intervention, and help improve both the current and future interventions. Quantitative evaluation methods are those that involve the collection and statistical analysis of numerical data. Surveys and experiments are two quantitative research methods that play a very important role ...