Pretesting
As you design your intervention's activities and components, continue getting audience feedback about your choices. It is easy to veer off
track, and checking in with the audience is helpful. Pretesting is
something that you should think about throughout phase 4. You may want to start
pretesting when you develop your initial plans for your program's activities,
or you may want to wait until you have more concrete plans for where and when
activities will take place.
If you have a budget for formative research, you may want to reserve a portion
of it for pretesting. Once you have an idea about what your program or
materials will look like, it is no time to start ignoring the opinions and
feedback of the audience. Pretesting is just as important as formative
research, and can even be viewed as a continuation of your formative research.
Tip
No matter how well you pretest, you won't have it perfect the first time.
But, learn from your mistakes, fix them, and keep improving what you offer the
target audience. It may never be perfect, but will be more effective each time
if you listen and respond. On a long-term basis, pretesting can become part of
your process evaluation plan.
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