Evaluation of the Encouraging Better Practice in Aged Care (ebpac) Initiative Final Report

8DISSEMINATION

This section reports on dissemination activities undertaken by projects and includes data from nine dissemination logs from 11 projects submitted between November 2012 and July 2014. A total of 197 dissemination activities were recorded.

8.1Type of dissemination

Project officers were asked to record type of dissemination, the purpose of the dissemination, whether they received any follow up contact about the activity and how they rated the effectiveness of the activity.

Type of dissemination included a range of activities such as stories published in newsletters or newspapers, information provided on a website or via an email list, presentations at conferences, radio and television interviews or advertising, brochures or pamphlets and peer reviewed journal articles. An outline of the most commonly reported dissemination activities are included in Table below, including the number of these activities undertaken and the proportion they represent of all dissemination activities. The five most commonly recorded activities included:

A story in a professional or industry magazine or newsletter

Information provided on a website

Presentation at a national or state/territory or local conference

Story in a local magazine or newsletter

Brochures, leaflets or posters in a health and community setting

Those activities least used by projects included television interviews, media advertising and radio advertising.

Table Type of dissemination by number and proportion

Type of Dissemination	Number	%
Story in a professional or industry magazine or newsletter	19	9.6
Information provided on a website	19	9.6
Presentation or poster at a national conference	19	9.6
Presentation or poster at a State/Territory conference	17	8.6
Story in a local magazine or newsletter	14	7.1
Presentation or poster at a local conference	14	7.1
Brochures, leaflets or posters in health & community settings	10	5.1
Email communication to groups/lists	7	3.6
Project newsletter	6	3.0
Story in the local newspaper	4	2.0
Peer-reviewed journal article	3	1.5
Radio interview	2	1.0
Media advertising	1	0.5
Television interview	0	0
Other	62	31.5
Total	197	100

There was a large number of dissemination activities described as ‘other’ (31.5%). These activities were analysed and classified into additional categories. The five most common other categories described by project officers included:

Education and information sessions for families, residents and interested persons

Staff education and/or training sessions

Presentation to an Advisory Group/Board or senior management group

Reports such as a report to a Board or annual report segment or a report for a general audience.

The sharing of resources with external organisations (e.g. other health service, local Council)

8.2Purpose of dissemination

Project officers were asked to identify the purpose of the dissemination. Purpose for dissemination was described as:

Dissemination for awareness - audiences are made aware of the development/innovation/deliverables/project details.

Dissemination for understanding - the audience is provided with more detail about the development and are perceived as beneficiaries. In this case audiences are often targeted.

Dissemination for action - this 'refers to a change of practice resulting from the adoption of products, materials or approaches offered by your project. These groups/audiences will be those people that are in a position to ‘influence’ and ‘bring about change’ within their organisations. These are the groups/audiences that will need to be equipped with the right skills, knowledge and understanding of your work in order to achieve real change'⁵⁹.

The majority of dissemination activities were described as dissemination for awareness (55.8%). An outline of the number the type of dissemination activities described by the purpose of the dissemination is provided in Table below.

Table Dissemination activities by purpose of dissemination

Type of dissemination	Action	Awareness	Understanding	Not answered
Brochures, leaflets or posters in health & community settings	1	4	2	-
Email communication to groups/lists	-	4	3	-
Information provided on a website	-	9	11	-
Media advertising	-	-	-	1
Other	19	23	25	-
Peer-reviewed journal article	-	2	-	-
Presentation or poster at a local conference	1	8	3	-
Presentation or poster at a national conference	-	16	4	-
Presentation or poster at a State/Territory conference	-	10	8	-
Project newsletter	2	6	1	1
Radio interview	-	1	1	-
Story in a local magazine or newsletter	1	8	-	1
Story in a professional or industry magazine or newsletter	-	17	-	-
Story in the local newspaper	-	2	2	-
Total	24	110	60	3

Those activities most commonly described as dissemination for awareness included:

Presentation at a conference (national, state/territory or local) (n = 34, 30.9%)

Other dissemination activity (n = 23, 20.9%)

Story in a professional or industry magazine or newsletter (n = 17, 15.5%)

Information provided on a website (n = 9, 8.2%)

Story in a local magazine or newsletter (n = 8, 7.3%)

The next most common purpose of dissemination activities was dissemination for understanding (30.5%). Those activities most commonly described as dissemination for understanding included:

‘Other’ dissemination activities (n = 25; 41.7%)

Presentation at a conference (national, state/territory or local) (n = 15; 25.0%)

Information provided on a website (n = 11; 18.3%)

Dissemination for action was the least common purpose for dissemination (n = 24; 12.2%). Within dissemination for action, ‘Other’ dissemination activities (79.2%) were the major type of dissemination activity described. These mostly included disseminating information at a steering committee, advisory group or consortia meeting.