national asthma control program W r i t i n g

Answer the following question:

what is a key feature or features of an answerable program evaluation question? Do you think that “answerability” can usually be determined in advance? You may wish to give an example. Limit your response to one or two paragraphs maximum.

There can be more than one question on the same topic, but please do not reformulate a question that has already been asked. The questions should target U.S. adults (to be simple and specific) and—for behavioral variables—should refer to behaviors undertaken during the past year. The response options should permit direct operationalization of variables and be mutually exclusive.

Try to include all response options in one single question, and think about how the variable will be entered in a database.

Respond to the following response 1:

The most important and key feature of an answerable program evaluation question is that you can find the answer of the question in the data collected. According to Lori Wingate and Daniela Schroeter, answerable questions reflect the real-world constraints on the type and quantity of data that can feasibly be collected, analyzed, and interpreted. Questions should be answerable based on 1. Data that can be accessed for the evaluation, with due consideration of privacy, ethics, politics, geography, and other issues. 2. Resources available to collect, analyze, and interpret data, including time, personnel, technology, and funding (Wingate & Schroeter, 2007)

I believe if the evaluator has done some research on the program and have full cooperation from stakeholders, yes “answerability” of a program evaluation can be determined in advance. Tools such as checklists have been used for evaluators to ensure the question can be answered. The CDC’s National Asthma Control Program in 2013 came up with a “Checklist for Assessing Your Evaluation Questions”. The success of an evaluation lies in appropriately focusing the overarching evaluation questions (CDC, 2013).

Respond to the follow response 2:

From class notes, we’ve learned that the key feature of an answerable program evaluation question is its usefulness to the evaluation so that it can supply meaningful data that can be used by the shareholders. Aldrich (2004) said that “meaningful questions are the heart of an evaluation,” I agree with this comment for the basic fact that the question must coincide with variables related to the program to give useful and relevant information.

According to Rossi (2009), we could determine if questions are answerable by determining if the questions are ambiguous or vague. I agree with this, as deciding if questions are specific and can’t be interpreted in different ways by different people will help to solidify the questions as answerable, and this can be determined in advance. An example question: What percentage of patients request to ‘switch back’ to conventional appointments after registering with the virtual health platform? This question is reasonable, specific, and the answer will provide data that will be easy to understand and communicate with others. Especially to those that need to know if the program is accomplishing its main goal of getting patients to accept virtual health.