Measuring changes with traditional and retrospective pre-posttest self-report surveys for a brief intervention...

Traditional and retrospective pre-posttest self-report surveys were used to evaluate a brief intervention program, the Latino Enrollment Institute (LEI) at the University of Notre Dame. Results showed that the retrospective approach yielded a greater magnitude of change in participants' perceptions of changes in their understanding and practices related to the LEI content. In addition, the retrospective approach identified changes in participant's beliefs that were unable to be detected using traditional pre-posttest surveys due to ceiling effects at the time of the pretest. Implications for evaluators are to consider retrospective designs to measure changes in beliefs when participants self-select into interventions and therefore presumably hold high beliefs about the content at the outset of the intervention.