Sustainability: Promoting Sustainable Decision Making in Informal Education, Outreach Campaign Summative Evaluation

Overview of the Local Voices, Clever Choices Project: As part of the National Science Foundation funded "Sustainability: Promoting Sustainable Decision Making in Informal Education" project, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) and its partners developed a bilingual (Spanish/English) outreach campaign- Local Voices, Clever Choices/Nuestras voces, nuestras decisiones. The goal of this and other deliverables was to promote sustainable decision making by building skills that allow participants to weigh the tradeoffs of their choices and thereby choose more sustainable practices. The target audiences were Portland area adults and youth (13–17) outside of the museum, including Spanish-speaking community members. The campaign, launched on September 1, 2012, consisted of a bilingual website (www.omsi.edu/choices and www.omsi.edu/decisiones) and several physical and virtual access points in the community that encouraged participants to visit the websites or call an automated phone system to hear a short Local Voices story. The website had two sections: Voices to hear local stories and Choices to practice taking actions by completing challenges that led to a variety of themed virtual badges. The summative study evaluated whether the campaign achieved the following impacts: 1. Encourage community members, especially target audiences, to access sustainability-related content outside of the museum. 2. Support the social norming of sustainable choices. 3. Inspire and motivate participants to build skills related to making more sustainable choices. The Sustainability project duration was September 2009–April 2015. Portland State University, in collaboration with OMSI, supported many phases of evaluation during the project and led all summative evaluation activities.

Findings: Methods included data analysis of website, Quick Response code, and phone system use; web/phone-based participant surveys, and a debrief discussion with the project team. The findings demonstrate that, overall, the project successfully achieved the intended outcomes for audience participation. However, some of the participation levels with the website and with evaluation methods were slightly below expectation and they were also unexpected positive impacts. During the project duration, the number of website users exceeded the intended minimum (6000) number of total users and the minimum (10%) percentage of Spanish content users. There were not enough data to verify social norming of sustainable choices. Too few users took the opt-in, web-based survey to produce significant results, yet most who participated said the stories describe actions that are a normal part of making sustainable choices. There was also not enough data from those surveys to determine whether participants were inspired and motivated to build skills related to making more sustainable choices. Yet most who participated indicated a high motivation level to learn more about everyday things that are good for our community and high inspiration level to take challenges and do more things that are good for their home or community. Use of the Choices site exceeded the desired (10%) minimum of all users, but completion rates of the Challenges activity were slightly lower (8.4%) than the desired (10%) rate. The debrief discussion emphasized the importance of flexibility and adaptability to rapidly changing communication technology and preferences; and the value of supportive relationships in providing additional resources and in promoting project deliverables as needed. Generally, desired impacts evolved with changes in communication technologies, yet the project’s adaptations led to successful achievement of intended outcomes. While some data were inconclusive or lower than desired levels, the unanticipated impacts provided significant lessons. The following recommendations for future projects emerged from the evaluation findings: 1. Engage community partners.2. Involve and leverage internal stakeholders in all phases of the project. 3. Use efficient, adaptable outreach strategies. 4. Involve community members in creating and disseminating content. 5. Adapt evaluation and promotion techniques to increase participation.

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