Evaluating Passive Programming

Introduction

This overview provides suggestions on how to evaluate “passive programming” or“unstructured programming”. This is programming designed to raise awareness that may not fit neatly into trainings, facilitated conversations, or presentations that require students to attend in-person sessions. Passive programming includes unstructured activities such as interactive or visual displays, messaging campaigns, tabling events with brochures and information, or longer events with different programs that participants can freely flow in and out of. Passive programming is a useful tool for reaching wider audiences, especially those who might not have the time or interest to attend a more formal event. Research has found that even those who are not interested in a topic will naturally absorb some information just by being exposed to it passively.

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Ideas for how to evaluate the scope and impact of passive programs Monitoring

Monitoring the number of people attending is a common form of evaluation that is used to quantitatively evaluate or report the number of people exposed to passive programming.

If participants have one entry point (i.e., all enter through one door), use a clicker, or something similar, to count the number of people who have entered. This is more accurate than sign in sheets as often people forget to sign in.
At exit doors, have a basket of give-aways (e.g., chocolates, pens) and do a pre and post count. You can approximate how many people attended based on how many items were taken. For example, if before the training 400 pens were in the basket, and after the training 20 were in the basket, it can be calculated that 380 people attended (400-20=380).

Surveys

Monitoring the number of people attending is a common form of evaluation that is used to quantitatively evaluate or report the number of people exposed to passive programming.

Old-fashioned pen and paper post-test. Recommendations are to ensure it is short, with clear instructions especially for flipping to the other side of the paper.
Online surveys: Provide a link to Qualtrics or other platform posted on a power point, projector, or on a wall and ask participants to follow the link to complete the survey. Make sure that it is accessible via smartphones. Use a CQ code that students can scan and will directly go to the survey.
For programs that are in an open space (no single entry/exit points), schedule times when staff will randomly select a few participants to fill out a survey. At the end of the event, aggregate the results. For example, if every 2 hours members of the programming team select two people to fill out a short survey, by the end of the day there will be a large number of completed surveys.
In the middle of the program, find a strategic place to stop and ask viewers/participants to complete a survey before the program resumes. It is important that this pause is part of the overall program. For example, if it is a runway show, pause between the ending of one set of clothes and beginning of another set.

Emerging themes from feedback collection

Collecting and analyzing feedback and patterns of thinking is a way to qualitatively evaluate participants’ more nuanced thoughts and feelings about a program.

Have a white board and have an eye-catching/provocative statement on it. Ask people to write their response in order to evaluate participants’ perceptions of the topic. This, for example, could be a board that reads “consent is important because…” or “one rape myth I often hear is…”, and have people write their responses.
Use a stand, and provide post-it notes to ask students to write down their opinion, perception, or emotion about something, such as what their perception is on what a healthy relationship is, for example. At the end, collect all notes and look for emerging themes.
Have a board with one question to assess how participants felt about the program/event. For example, “What is the first emotion you experienced after seeing this video/completing this training/walking through this display…?” and collect those responses.
State the following and have participants write their responses: “Use one word to describe what you just saw.” This is different from number three (above) as the question asks what they saw, not how they felt.
Have unbiased observers (who are not aware of the actual program) randomly placed around the program to take note of people’s reactions and look for themes. With this technique, either have a list of themes previously made and instruct the observer to track the number they see for each, or have them free write what reactions they see and at the end look for emerging themes

Conclusion

This document provides suggestions on how to evaluate “passive programming” through monitoring, surveys, and feedback collection. These are only a few suggestions to help campuses evaluate reaching wider audiences, beyond more formal events.