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Background:
Digital communication as a behavior change strategy is becoming increasingly valuable to the development, implementation, and evaluation of health communications and marketing programs. With over 1.5 billion Internet users today, many social marketers recognize the value of engaging audiences through digital media in large-scale public health campaigns (Cugelman, Thelwall, & Dawes, 2011). However, literature has identified gaps in strategic measurement and evaluation of digital media’s impact on behavior change, stating that “most observers have relegated themselves to using as the standard measurement, the basic ‘click’, ‘tweet’ and ‘like’ data,” which are “a small measure of reach and do not demonstrate health behavior change” (Burke-Garcia, 2014). As the digital landscape evolves and more users are engaged online, so does the need for a thorough understanding of best practices to enable strategic, evidence-based applications. We explore this topic and address three primary research questions: 1) What is the evidence that digital strategies, such as social media engagement, can affect behavior, 2) How can we measure the influence of digital strategies on behavior, and 3) Is it possible to measure impact of digital strategies on behavior?
Program background:
A study in progress is examining peer-reviewed literature identified through PubMed, PsychINFO, Google Scholar, and gray literature to explore the aforementioned research questions. Focus groups will be conducted with subject matter experts and/or key informants to further inform these questions. Results are being aggregated into a final report which will define and provide an overview of best practices for measurement and evaluation, as well as future directions in the public health sector and within existing and future technologies.
Evaluation Methods and Results:
Subject matter experts will be reengaged to review final conclusions and measures to evaluate which research questions have been answered and which need further study. By the date of this presentation, the results presented will inform best practices for using digital media in health communications and marketing. A well-informed and evidence-based approach, framework, and/or proxy measure will be presented to help practitioners better evaluate and measure behavior change in the digital environment.
Conclusions:
As the digital environment continues to evolve, new social media tools and analytic capabilities continue to appear at the forefront of online communications. Health communication and marketing professionals have the opportunity to strategically apply these tools to influence and evaluate health behavior change. To that end, it is vital to use an evidence-based approach to measure efficacy within a controlled environment – and, if possible – evaluate population-level impact on behavior change and health outcomes.
Implications for research and/or practice:
These findings will provide a better understanding for how health communication and marketing programs can evaluate their digital initiatives beyond traditional process measures, such as clicks or Tweets. The summary as well as framework or proxy measures that emerge will be instrumental to a solid base for using digital and social media in these programs. Gaps in current evaluation methods will aim to galvanize the development of improved digital media analyses techniques and/or measures of desired outcomes.