Reflections on Evaluating Health Communication Campaigns

Abstract

The purpose of this special issue of Communication Methods and Measures is to promote a dialogue on the issue of health communication campaign outcome evaluation. The articles are based upon a one-day preconference that took place at the Tenth Biennial Kentucky Conference on Health Communication (KCHC) in Lexington, Kentucky, in April 2008. In the current article we reflect on these article contributions, discuss design elements used by these studies to reduce internal validity threats, and propose future areas for research on campaign evaluation. We make several conclusions regarding campaign evaluation, including the need for 1) increased use of design elements known to increase internal validity in campaign evaluations and 2) new methodological studies that examine how evaluation design affects the accuracy of inferences made with regard to campaign effects.