PROJECT SUMMARY

SITUATION

ACTIVITIES

TOOLS IN DEVELOPMENT

TOOLS IN APPLICATION

CONTACT US

Applying education tools and techniques found on the Water Outreach Education Web site can help natural resource professionals and agencies realize their water management goals. The Changing Public Behavior National Facilitation Project focuses attention on the application of social science tools to enhance the education process.

ACTIVITIES

The Project assists water scientists, natural resource professionals, and educators develop and use audience information to improve citizen understanding and involvement in community decision-making for water resources.

Through training, peer support, and practice, water resource professionals can learn:

• What questions to ask.
• What tools to use to gather social science information.
• How to use the tools and how to analyze results.
• How to use results to select outreach techniques that satisfy audience needs.

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PROJECT SUMMARY

The USDA/CSREES National Facilitation Project, Changing Public Behavior – Increase Citizen Involvement Using Target Audience Information, is designed to help water resource professionals apply education and social science research in new and creative ways to encourage the public to adopt environmentally-friendly habits. Project workshops, to be offered in late 2007, will train water educators to focus on local interests and conditions when encouraging people to take environmentally appropriate actions in their home, business, organization, or community. The project will also provide resources to help water professionals understand the needs and habits of specific or target audiences (farmers, homeowners, landowners, etc.) so they can more effectively provide water management techniques and assist in the local environmental decision process.

SITUATION

Extension’s water management professionals want to improve their understanding of target audiences and want to be able to use social science tools.

Implementing outreach techniques that lead to measurable impacts is not a simple or straight-forward process.

A survey of Extension national water program state coordinators (Shepard, 2002, p. 7) identifies a lack of information about behavior and/or management practice adoption rates at the start of a project as a barrier to evaluation.

Relatively few Extension water resource professionals have backgrounds that enable them to use social science tools successfully. Project assessment tools and training will help educators analyze the social components of particular environmental situations. It will also help them determine what indicators to use to measure change. Information resulting from the assessments will improve their abilities to select one or more “interventions” that are most likely to lead to desired short and/or long-term outcomes.

Shepard, R. L. (2002). Evaluating Extension-based water resource outreach programs: Are we meeting the challenge? Journal of Extension, 40 (1). 

TOOLS IN DEVELOPMENT

• A decision-tree for choosing which social science tools will work best for a particular situation
• Both in-person and Web-based training opportunities
• A searchable database for target audience information and social science tools
• A self-evaluation rubric for measuring skill development
• Support for a Community of Practice to improve participant skills and resources for assessing target audiences.

TOOLS IN APPLICATION

What does the successful application of a social science tool look like? Here’s an example:

In the paper, Are we reaching the target audience? Evaluation of a fish fact sheet, Burger and Waishwell (2001), describe their study of the effectiveness of fact sheets used to provide public information about fish contamination and consumption. The social assessment tool they applied helped them answer the following questions:

• What message(s) does the audience obtain from the fact sheet?
• Who should be the target audience for the fact sheet?
• Who should be concerned about risks of fish consumption?
• What are the best methods for disseminating this kind of information?

The researchers discovered that there were “significant ethnic differences” in risk perception and understanding of some information presented. How would you apply this information to create a more relevant message?

The Changing Public Behavior Project will guide educators through the use of this type of audience assessment helping educators decide what social science tool to apply and how to use the information gathered to reach management objectives.

Burger J., & Waishwell, L. (2001). Are we reaching the target audience? Evaluation of a fish fact sheet. The Science of the Total Environment, 277 (1-3), 77-86.

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