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

8.3Follow up after dissemination

Projects were also asked to record incidences of follow up activity. Specifically they were asked ‘Did anyone who heard about the project follow-up by seeking more information?’ Approximately 75% of projects included an answer to this question. Overall, there was follow-up activity for just over 50% of dissemination activities recorded. A further quarter recorded no follow-up activity whilst another quarter did not answer this question. Table provides an outline of activities that were followed up and those that were not.

Table Dissemination activities by follow-up received

Type of dissemination	Not answered	No	Yes
Other	28	9	30
Presentation or poster at a national conference	0	3	17
Presentation or poster at a State/Territory conference	2	5	11
Information provided on a website	3	8	9
Presentation or poster at a local conference	1	4	7
Story in a professional or industry magazine or newsletter	1	9	7
Brochures, leaflets or posters in health & community settings	0	1	6
Story in a local magazine or newsletter	3	1	6
Email communication to groups/lists	4	1	2
Story in the local newspaper	0	1	2
Peer-reviewed journal article	0	1	1
Project newsletter	5	4	1
Radio interview	0	1	1
Media advertising	1	0	0
Newspaper article	1	0	0
Total	49	48	100

Of those activities that recorded follow up activity, those with the greatest amount of follow up included:

Presentation or poster at a conference (national, state/territory or local) (n = 35; 35%)

‘Other’ dissemination activities (n = 30; 30%)

Story in a magazine or newsletter (professional or industry or local) (n = 13; 13%)

Information provided on a website (n = 9; 9%)

Brochures, leaflets or posters in health & community settings (n = 6; 6%)

Those activities that did not receive follow up were similar to those that did receive follow up. These included ‘other dissemination activities (18.8%), Story in a professional or industry magazine or newsletter (18.8%) and information provided on a website (16.7%). Many of these activities that did and did not receive follow-up also comprised a large part of all dissemination activities. Given the large number of projects that did not report on follow-up activity, results should be interpreted with some caution.

8.4Effectiveness of dissemination

Effectiveness of dissemination was rated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being least effective and 5 being most effective. Table provides an outline of how projects rated the effectiveness of dissemination activities. Included is an average score for the effectiveness for each type of dissemination activity. Not all projects provided an effectiveness rating for dissemination activities. Approximately 69.5% (n = 137) of activities were rated and 29.4% (n = 58) did not provide a rating. The effectiveness of these activities were rated by project officers and there may be some differences in how the effectiveness rating was interpreted.

Table Dissemination activities by effectiveness rating

Type of dissemination	1	2	3	4	5	Av. rating	Not answered
Peer-reviewed journal article	0	0	0	0	2	5	0
Brochures, leaflets or posters in health & community settings	0	0	1	1	5	4.6	0
Other	0	2	7	3	23	4.3	31
Story in a professional or industry magazine or newsletter	0	0	3	4	7	4.3	3
Story in the local newspaper	0	0	1	0	2	4.3	0
Project newsletter	0	0	0	3	1	4.3	6
Story in a local magazine or newsletter	1	0	2	0	4	3.9	3
Presentation or poster at a local conference	0	1	2	8	1	3.8	0
Presentation or poster at a State/Territory conference	1	0	7	5	4	3.6	1
Information provided on a website	2	4	5	4	2	3.2	3
Presentation or poster at a national conference	0	1	4	7	2	3.1	6
Email communication to groups/lists	1	0	0	2	0	3.0	4
Radio interview	0	0	0	0	1	1.0	1
Newspaper article	1	0	0	0	0	1.0	0
Media advertising	0	0	0	0	0	0	1
Grand Total	6	8	32	37	54	3.9	58

Those activities with an average rating over four included:

Peer reviewed journal article (av. Rating = 5)

Brochures, leaflets or posters in health & community settings (av. Rating = 4.6)

Other dissemination activities (av. Rating = 4.3)

Project newsletter (av. Rating = 4.3)

Story in a professional or industry magazine or newsletter (av. Rating = 4.3)

Story in the local newspaper (av. Rating = 4.3)

Those activities with the lowest ratings were newspaper article and radio interview. Given the small numbers involved in how many times some of these activities were recorded the result should be interpreted with some caution.