Process Evaluation in the Community Intervention Trial for Smoking Cessation (COMMIT)

The reach and complexity of the multi-site Community Intervention Trial for Smoking Cessation (COMMIT) project call for an extensive, comprehensive evaluation plan. This article reports on the objectives, methods, and data sets of the part of the plan designed for process evaluation. We describe the systems developed for: monitoring progress in the sites, the quality of local intervention activities and data collection, and compliance with the trial-wide protocol; disseminating information for formative purposes; and generating and using process data for outcome evaluation. The process evaluation approach includes both quantitative and qualitative methods. We provide examples from community mobilization and intervention in different communities.