ABSTRACT
This chapter covers some practical issues that a rural evaluator experiences. Rural health departments have limited budgets and provide more direct patient services—this challenges evaluation because there are limited staff to evaluate programs. Rural evaluators are in a unique position to impact social change. Retaining program staff in rural health departments is an issue—without staff who are familiar with the community, context, and program—it can be difficult to evaluate a program. Community or in-house planners/evaluators may be established to carry out an evaluation. Evaluators may be involved in developing a budget for a rural program; in other instances, they may be hired after a program is funded and there is a set amount in the budget for the evaluation—costs for evaluation vary considerably. Professional printing costs for reports and brochures generated through a program/evaluation may be higher due to shipping costs associated with the rural community.
