Introduction

In Study Session 15, you learnt how to carry out some of your health education activities. Your next step is to find out how effective your health education work has been — and how to evaluate the extent of your achievements. Evaluation is crucial for all health education and promotion programmes. It is the only way to find out which of your activities have been successful, and which need changing in some way. As a Health Extension Practitioner, your activities will involve educating individuals, households and community groups, and you will be expected to evaluate the effects of your own activities (Figure 16.1).

In this study session you will be learning how to evaluate your health education activities. Specifically, you will learn what the term ‘evaluation’ means and the purpose of evaluation, as well as some of the methods and different types of evaluation you can use.