Evaluation of Outreach as a Project Element

Abstract

Outreach is a term frequently used to describe active recruitment of program participants and is a common element of many social service and disease prevention programs. Outreach as a project element has received renewed attention with the advent of new federal demonstration projects to serve groups that are difficult to locate, difficult to recruit into services, or difficult to retain within a system of services. The goals of this article are to (a) define outreach, (b) describe the history of outreach as a project element within federal social programs, (c) outline what we perceive as central sources of variation in this element, (d) describe measures of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, and (e) prepare the evaluator for some recurring implemen tation issues.