Nutrition and Physical Activity: Social Marketing and Formative Assessments
Social marketing can be a helpful tool for building partnerships and making plans. It also is important during a structured and strategic planning process. Use social marketing to influence the behavior of policymakers and others who affect policy and environmental changes. You also should use social marketing to lead behavior changes by people targeted for intervention.
Formative assessments play a key role in planning. They assess the “how” and “why” aspects of your goals and action plan. Guiding your ongoing planning process, they allow you to adjust as circumstances change through the years of your intervention.
Resources
Social marketing
- Health Communication Gateway—Social marketing resources from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
- Obesity Prevention Coordinators’ Social Marketing Guidebook (PDF)—Guidance on coordinating an obesity and overweight prevention intervention. Each section focuses on a distinct phase in the social marketing process.
Formative assessments
These links offer resources and techniques to help you perform a formative assessment of your intervention plan.
- Moving to the Future: Community Opinion—Explains surveys, focus groups, and more.
- In-depth interviews
- Key Informant/Interview Guidance (Log in required to access this resource. Select the Word version of “Session 2: Moving to the Future Worksheets” on page 66.)
- Intercept interviews
- Environmental assessment
- Nutrition Environments Measures Survey—You must be trained to use these measures. Email dhschronicdiseaseprevention@dhs.wisconsin.gov for details.
- Fruit and vegetable audit tool
- Walkability Checklist (PDF)
- Bikeability Checklist (PDF)
- Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (S.W.O.T.) analysis
- Rapid assessment procedure
- Surveys: mail, phone, or web-based
- Literature review