Evaluating the cancer education program: examining a range of approaches

The objectives of this article are to provide people who are responsible for cancer education programs with a broadened perspective of the rich array of evaluation strategies available and responsive to the evaluation needs of cancer education programs, and to summarize selected literature resources useful for the development of an evaluation plan. This article reviews limitations found in previous evaluations of medical education programs and provides a descriptive survey of diverse strategies for the evaluation of cancer education programs. The characteristics, requirements, utility, audience, constraints, and resources are presented. Two cancer related case studies are discussed in detail as illustrations of the diversity of strategies available to evaluate cancer education programs.