ABSTRACT
Community-based health interventions typically begin with a needs assessment that requires the accumulation of data. Likewise, data are also used to evaluate health interventions. Some have argued, however, that in community-based work, the overemphasis on so-called objective data has narrowed the knowledge base that can be used to design and evaluate health interventions. This chapter describes the role of data in developing and evaluating community-based health interventions and provides a critique regarding which types of data are considered appropriate for doing so. The trend of viewing randomized clinical trials as the gold standard for evaluating interventions is also discussed.
