Linking Patients to HIV Care in a Timely Manner

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Evaluation Plan

 

Overall Evaluation Design

 

Our overall intervention will be a non-experimental design, but for our evaluation plan we have chosen to evaluate one section of our intervention that we see is more prominent, for this we have chosen the video that we will be showing in our experimental focus groups. For the focus groups, we have chosen an experimental design, that will have a control and experimental group. To insure an experimental design, we will be using randomization via computer software, this will be in the way we recruit our participants, methods of recruitment will be discussed later.

 

Limitations in our study will relate to both the internal and external validity of our experiment, due to the overall non-experimental design. One threat to the internal validity is testing. We will be having pretests and posttests for both our control and experimental groups. These tests will be exactly the same, the threat we face with this is that familiarity with the test can influence the performance on the second test. Changes in the final scores could be due to repeated testing. In order to minimize this threat, changing the wording and order of the questions in the posttest will possibly make the participant rethink the question instead of just answering it.

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The second threat we face, relates to the external validity of our experiment. HIV is a very sensitive topic for many, especially for MSM and the LGBTQ community, this could affect our experiment through social desirability. They may not feel completely comfortable with the questions, they may be guided by what they feel is socially desirable. This could result in inaccurate responses. In order to minimize this threat, we ensure participants that their answers will remain confidential to researchers.

 

The placebo effect is a threat that we feel will affect the external validity of our experiment. When participants take the pretest, it could affect their expectations of what they think they should gain from the study versus them actually being affected by the treatment in the study. If the participants are made aware that they are participating in a study this could also result in the placebo effect. To minimize this threat, we can tell participants that they are only participating in a focus group and that the pretest is only so we know in what order to form the discussion. 

 

To determine the effectiveness of an intervention it is vital for program planners to gather accurate data from respondents. First, our respondents will be gathered via flyers placed around areas such as clinics, college campuses, and community organizations that support our efforts. To get their allowance to post, we plan to personally contact designated locations in the city of Long Beach first, so that we will be able to gage the number of flyers we will need to print. Respondents will be invited to RSVP for our study, the flyers themselves will have our contact information. Once recipients reserve their seat, they will be emailed a locator form and demographic questionnaire. Respondents will have the option to email their responses or fill out physical copies on the day of engagement in the study. Our focus groups, control and experimental, will include people from different demographics, such as healthcare providers, policy makers, political figures, college students, men who have sex with men (MSM), LGBTQ community, and the general public, whom we will recruit through emails and flyers. 

 

Our evaluation data will be collected throughout the program with the majority of the data being qualitative. We will conduct video screenings during our focus groups.  We will have one control group and one experimental group for each screening with a total of five screenings each consisting of 20 people. 

 

Upon entry to each session, every participant will sign in with their name and email address on designated Ipads. Also, they will be asked to sign off on consent forms for our study. Once the participant has signed in, he/she will be put in their assigned group. During the blind study participants in both the control and experimental will be given a pretest, the baseline, that will allow us to know how much prior knowledge the participants have of HIV, linkage to care, and its current state in the city of Long Beach. The pretest will be a physical free response questionnaire.  Once completed, the consent forms and pretests will be collected and the control group will then start the discussion part of the focus group. The experimental group will have the discussion and then will be shown the video. 

 

Immediately after the control and experimental group will be given the posttest, which will be identical to the pretest. This way we will be able to see if there were any areas of improvement in the participants’ attitudes and knowledge of HIV and linkage to care. This will allow us to see if the implementation of our intervention is shown to be effective. Because participants are asked to answer the post test during their time, it will not be necessary to stay in touch for subsequent evaluation. However, at this time, we will ask them their intention to sign our petition and have it readily available to sign. After implementing this process upon 5 different focus groups, participants will sign out via the same Ipads. In exchange for their time, incentives will be in the form of gift bags filled with gift cards.

 

Once the focus groups have been conducted, the intervention video will be posted on the program’s website as well as its social media accounts such as Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter and be available to the public. The intervention video will bring about awareness of HIV and how important linkage to care is, by conveying amotivational, relatable, and honestmessage. Attached to the video will be a link to a petition stating HIV as a real and serious problem that needs to be destigmatized and brought to the surface. In order to help reduce the ever growing rate of HIV positive patients, there needs to be an increase in the budget for health educational programs and resources. The increase in budget will provide the city of Long Beach with the resources needed to combat HIV and increase the linkage to healthcare by HIV positive patients by making these resources more accessible physically and emotionally. If we are able to acquire the 100,000 signatures needed to pass this petition, this demonstrates that our intervention as a whole was effective. 

 

Example Questions:

1. Rate whether you intend to vote on the matter during the upcoming election, on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being not at all to 5 being very strongly.

2. Do you believe there should be a change in public funding towards HIV/AIDs treatment and care? Rate on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being not at all to 5 being very strongly.

• Process evaluation: 

  • Our process objective is to have 100 people enrolled to participate in our focus groups. We aim to contact those who are key influencers in the HIV/AIDs movement such as healthcare providers, policy makers, and political figures. We will aim to identify and email at least 150 of these people. We also aim to recruit college students, men who have sex with men (MSM), LGBTQ community, and the general public through flyers that will be passed out at different locations around Long Beach. Those who respond positively will be added to our roster, which will be used to evaluate our process objective. 

• Impact evaluation: 

  • Our impact objective is to have decrease the stigma that surrounds HIV/AIDs. This will be evaluated via our experimental group, when comparing the results of their post test compared to the control groups. The experimental groups results will be used to measure the change in attitude, because they were the group that was exposed to the video.

• Outcome evaluation: 

  • Our outcome objective is to increase the budget that can be put towards linking patients to HIV care in in the city of Long Beach. This will be measured by obtaining 100,000 signatures for our petition to do so.