ABSTRACT
The questions ‘Does it work?’ and ‘Is it better than other interventions?’ are central to evaluation research and of great importance to organisations providing health care programmes for their employees. There is a major difference between evaluation research and other forms of research, in that evaluation research has the needs of consumers as its primary focus (Dane 1990). In post-trauma care there are a number of individuals and groups of consumers with an interest in whether the current interventions of trauma care management, debriefing and trauma counselling can provide any benefit. Each group will have opinions on the measurements of success criteria to be used to test the effectiveness of the intervention programme. In this chapter, the success criteria of a number of interested consumers will be examined, together with the existing methods of evaluating post-trauma interventions. Some of the challenges in undertaking post-trauma research in organisations will be described including the problems of dealing with organisational change, a lack of resources and short timescales. The current state of research into trauma counselling and debriefing is described together with some suggestions on what might be done to resolve the current difficulties.
