Prof. Jennifer Tieman1, Dr Raechel Damarell1
1Flinders University, Australia
Biography:
Professor Jennifer Tieman is a Matthew Flinders Professor and the inaugural Director of the Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death and Dying (RePaDD) a specialist research centre of Flinders University. She leads a series of national research and practice projects around palliative care, ageing, caring, dying, and grieving.
Abstract:
Background:
With the growing proliferation and reliance on digital resources, National Palliative Care Projects (NPCPs) need to document how they have met their performance indicators. As a publicly funded project providing palliative care resources, CareSearch has a responsibility to ensure that what we do is meaningful and valued. Creating an assessment framework would support how we identify and capture measures and indicators that demonstrate direct and indirect outcomes from engagement in the online environment.
Aims:
–To review digital translation considerations, and
–To develop a framework for assessing online health information outcomes and impacts.
Methods:
A scoping review was completed to identify and map methods and measures used to determine the impact of online health information. Thirty-five CareSearch and/or palliAGED evaluation studies were reviewed and triangulated. We used the findings from the scoping review and evaluation studies to guide the framework development. We completed a trial mapping of the 2023-2024 CareSearch (including palliAGED) project activities to test the framework’s utility. We are now developing a metric dashboard for ongoing data capture and testing systems data analysis.
Results:
The scoping review identified a small but emerging knowledge base and common measures such as pre-post, interview, and self-report measures. Across the scoping review and evaluation studies, we identified the need to consider micro-, meso-, and macro-level impacts for eliciting meaningful change. The review of our evaluation studies also reported formative, summative, process, and economic approaches, and showed the unrealised value of systems data. Trial mapping of project indicators and outcomes was successfully completed, and provided a critical focus for assessing impact.
Conclusions:
A transparent, structured approach to identifying and documenting the impacts of online resources enables us to demonstrate the project’s contribution to the sector. Further, it provides a base to test new activity measures for their impact.