Encouraging Best Practice in Residential Aged Care Program: Final Evaluation Report

8.3 - Project dissemination

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This section reports on dissemination activities carried out by projects, comprising data from the four progress reports submitted by each of the five Round 1 projects (covering the time period from October 2007 to September 2009) and the four progress reports submitted by the eight Round 2 projects (covering the time period from October 2008 to September 2010).

Project officers were asked to classify their dissemination activities by purpose. Between them, the 13 projects carried out a total of 1,683 dissemination activities to support capacity building and sustainability. This included, for example, presentations to staff at participating facilities. A total of 488 dissemination activities were designed to support generalisability, for example, through publicity and consultations involving the wider aged care community. An additional 32 dissemination activities were classified as serving both purposes, while 14 activities were not coded. Table 22 summarises the kinds of dissemination activities undertaken by projects. The accuracy of some of the data may be influenced by differing interpretations about what constitutes a dissemination activity.

The most commonly reported types of activities involved presentations and talks to staff, either within a single residential aged care facility or to mixed groups of staff from several facilities or agencies. Together, presentations to staff accounted for approximately 60% of all dissemination activities. This type of activity supports capacity building and sustainability.

Projects reported using a range of other methods of dissemination. Using email communications as a way of disseminating information was popular, as was publishing stories in newspapers, newsletters, and magazines. A significant number of presentations were given at local, state and national conferences. Additionally a small number of presentations were reported to have been delivered at international conferences. Other methods of dissemination that were only used a few times by a small number of projects included stories on radio and television. No peer-reviewed journal articles were published in the literature by projects during the course of the EBPRAC program. However, there are plans to write journal articles as project leads seek to capitalise on project outcomes and the potential to contribute to the sector more broadly.

More than 14% of dissemination activities were classified as ‘other’. These activities primarily included presentations at residential aged care facilities that not only included staff but also residents and families, talks at residents’ meetings and other focus groups and resident information sessions, phone calls, teleconferences and reporting to steering committees.

Table 22 Types of dissemination activities - October 2007 to September 2010

Dissemination Activity	Total activities	Percent of activities	Range across projects
Presentation or talk to staff at one residential aged care facility	910	41.05	0 – 156
Presentation or talk to staff from more than one residential aged care facility	138	6.22	0 – 41
Presentation or talk to staff from one or more services or agencies	257	11.59	0 – 55
Story in the local newspaper	19	0.86	0 – 8
Story in a local magazine or newsletter	30	1.35	0 – 7
Story in a professional or industry magazine or newsletter	24	1.08	0 – 4
Story on radio	4	0.18	0 – 2
Story on television	1	0.05	0 – 1
Presentation or poster at a local conference	15	0.68	0 – 5
Presentation or poster at a state/territory conference	15	0.68	0 – 6
Presentation or poster at a national conference	29	1.31	0 – 7
Peer reviewed journal article	-	-	-
Information provided on a website	52	2.35	0 – 36
Email communication to groups/lists	200	9.02	0 – 153
Brochures, leaflets or posters in health, aged care and community settings	57	2.57	0 – 22
Project newsletter	32	1.44	0 – 9
Other (please describe briefly)	320	14.43	0 - 117
Multi-coded/not coded	114	5.14	0 – 49
	2,217	100%

As is evident from the data relating to ranges of activities across projects, at least one project did not undertake any activities for each type of dissemination activity. This may reflect projects having differing priorities and in regards to methods of dissemination, or may just be the result of differences in interpretation and reporting of dissemination.
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As was the case for Round 1 projects, a number of Round 2 final project reports have documented additional dissemination activities following the submission of their final progress reports. These activities included presentations at state and national conferences, articles in newspapers and newsletters, and media releases. However, data about these activities has been excluded from this report to minimise inconsistencies, as it was only reported by a minority of projects. It is nonetheless an encouraging indicator that projects are continuing to disseminate their work, and it is anticipated that more dissemination activities will be undertaken subsequent to the completion of projects.

Project officers were also asked to estimate the number of people who heard or read about the project via the dissemination activity, and to indicate whether anyone who heard about the project had followed up by seeking more information. Table 23 presents this information for all dissemination methods.

Table 23 Persons reached and level of follow-up for dissemination activities

Dissemination Activity	Reach	Follow-up
	Persons reached	Number of activities followed up	Number of people who follow-up
Presentation or talk to staff at one residential aged care facility	7,975	218	492
Presentation or talk to staff from more than one residential aged care facility	1,662	42	189
Presentation or talk to staff from one or more services or agencies	3,244	66	339
Story in the local newspaper	34,016	7	17
Story in a local magazine or newsletter	5,971	4	51
Story in a professional or industry magazine or newsletter	109,217	7	16
Story on radio	unknown	2	10
Story on television	unknown	0	0
Presentation or poster at a local conference	747	9	79
Presentation or poster at a state/territory conference	1,622	6	34
Presentation or poster at a national conference	3,374	12	53
Peer reviewed journal article	-	-	-
Information provided on a website	1,393	9	24
Email communication to groups/lists	3,909	73	300
Brochures, leaflets or posters in health, aged care and community settings	8,347	20	135
Project newsletter	18,869	7	31
Other (please describe briefly)	5,660	89	467
Multi-coded/not coded*	3,311	25	863
	209,317	596	3,100

* Multi-coded items were dissemination activities that were assigned more than one code, ‘not coded’ items were dissemination activities which were not assigned a code. In both cases it was not possible to allocate the dissemination activity to any of the other categories in the table.

It should be noted that these numbers are estimates only and should be treated with some caution. As not all projects provided this information for all activities, it is not possible to include the total number of activities in this table.

Presentations and talks to staff at residential aged care facilities and other agencies had the most follow-up, suggesting this is an effective (albeit time-consuming) way to reach people who are genuinely interested. Talks which also included residents and families (reported as ‘other’) had a similarly effective reach. Email communication to groups/lists, and brochures, leaflets or posters in health and community settings also had significant reach and follow-up.
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