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Dragonfly, Fall 2000 Success with Outreach: Setting Goals and Objectives

Catherine Burroughs
NN/LM, Pacific Northwest

Deciding to develop a library program is a creative opportunity. You may be starting a new type of program or finally getting to something for which you've seen a need for a long time. Either way, you have a fresh slate and the chance to think about the program's goals and what will be done to achieve them.

When setting goals, remember they should be relevant to the audience or community you want to reach. Goals that only serve an agency or organizational agenda are too one-sided. A program's success will rest, in part, on whether you have buy-in from key stakeholders. Planning for goals they find important will make your project relevant, help to ensure sustainability, and encourage participation and partnerships.

To set relevant goals and objectives, go back to the data gathered during the community assessment phase, as described in the previous article of this series. Research conducted in the community assessment phase helped to understand the need and priorities for your program or service -- such as who will be targeted, what problems will be addressed, and what results or outcomes are intended. The goals and objectives you develop will help envision how these needs and problems will be addressed.

Goals are long-range statements describing a desired condition or future. An example project goal might be: Residents of Moran County will have access to and use credible, convenient health information resources for personal health decisions. This goal reflects the mutual priorities of the target audience and outreach staff. For residents, convenient access to health information is key to its actual use. From the perspectives of the outreach staff, getting people to evaluate and select credible resources is an equally important goal.

Goals are far reaching, and do provide an ideal, but they do not specify how they will be achieved. This is where objectives are helpful. Objectives help to define goals by specifying what will be done (the process) and what changes are intended (the outcomes). By constructing measurable objectives, you have defined targets to work toward and ways to measure whether you reach them.

There are two types of measurable objectives-process and outcomes-based. Process objective lists what activities you think will impact your hoped for outcome. For example: The Moran County outreach project will increase awareness of electronic health information resources by conducting a 6-month promotion campaign via printed materials, electronic media, and demonstrations.

An outcomes-based objective states criterion to measure the hoped for result. For example, an outcomes-based objective might be: At least 50% of community center visitors in the last month of the project will have heard about MEDLINEPlus, as measured by an exit survey. Asking community center visitors if they have heard about MEDLINEPlus is a way to measure the targeted outcome to "increase awareness of an electronic health information resource." The objective also lists a criterion of success: 50% of community center visitors.

Thus, by setting a few measurable process and outcome-based objectives, your program has a solid direction for use in planning and evaluation. Keep in mind that goals and objectives can be overwhelming or burdensome if they are not realistic or too numerous. Develop goals as a tool to help prioritize what you most want to achieve. Construct measurable objectives that set selective and realistic targets for what you will do (the process) and accomplish (the outcomes).

A brief note about outcomes: The example provided here is only one of the many outcomes that may result from outreach. Measurable outcomes resulting from outreach could also be gained knowledge, changed attitudes, changed beliefs, developed skill, increased use of health information resources, or increased organizational or community support.

Readers are referred to a newly published guide on outreach planning and evaluation for a fuller discussion of various outcomes and ways to reach and measure them. Measuring the Difference: Guide to Planning and Evaluation Health Information Outreach is available in spiral bound print from the Pacific Northwest Regional Medical Library. Free copies can be obtained by emailing nnlm@u.washington.edu with "evaluation guide" in the subject line, and your name, mailing address, and number of copies needed in the body.

URL: http://nnlm.gov/pnr/news/200010/success-3.html