Adoption

Conduct formative evaluations to identify what intervention features potential program adoptees (e.g., health systems, physician offices, elementary schools) would like.

• Consider the ease and feasibility of your intervention modality and staff requirements in terms of transferring the strategies to a practice setting.

• Prepare your intervention, training and materials to be easily replicated or disseminated to a practice setting.

Estimating Setting Level Participation and Adoption

If you are recruiting organizations or other intact groups to participate, consider the following elements:

• Based upon the literature, your experience, and with formative evaluation, try to anticipate primary barriers to participation in your program for settings and for potential intervention agents (e.g. teachers, physicians, peer counselors). How can you minimize or introduce methods to address these barriers in order to enhance participation?

• Estimate the number and percentage of settings or organizations in your local population that you hope to target. (e.g., "blue collar" worksites, elementary schools, HMO's)*

• Estimate the number and percentage of settings or organizations in your targeted group that meet your defined criteria. (e.g., no previous health promotion program in last 2 months, no immediate merger planned, classroom configuration to support study)*

• Record the number of settings that you exclude from participation and why.

• Record the percent of eligible settings that agree to participate in your study.

• Compare differences between those participating and those not participating on relevant characteristics such as size of organization, type of business, previous health promotion programs, number of employees/students/constituents, any policies regarding the target behaviors of interest or other key variables.

• Record reasons that settings/ organizations refused to participate in the study.

Estimating Attrition

Do the following for each study condition:

• Record how many ____ and when (what week of the intervention) _____ program adoptees dropped from the study.

• Compare differences between those settings or agents completing and not completing the study on resources, staff expertise, size, physical and social environments, and other key variables.