Evaluating the Impact of Conference Presentations on the Optimism of the Audience

209 Presentation EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS ON THE OPTIMISM OF THE AUDIENCE FREDERICK A. ERNST, Ph.D. RUPERT A. FRANCIS, M.D. HAZIM QAZAIT, B.S. RAYE DOWDY, M.S.P.H. Department of Family and Preventive Medicine Meharry Medical College Nashville, Tennessee 37208 Traditionally, conference speakers are evaluated by assessing the quality of their presentations. The notion of quality typically encompasses clarity, organization, relevance, time allowed for interaction between audience and speaker, the amount of knowledge gained by the audience, or even the adequacy of audio-visual support. We chose to add a novel element to our speaker evaluation by assessing the level of optimism the audience might feel toward the problems raised during the presentations. We thought this would be particularly useful because we perceived that topics relating to health care for the poor and underserved can often be the cause for pessimism in the hearts and minds of those who are searching for solutions. One need only witness the welldocumented gap in resources between the rich and poor which has widened progressively in recent years.1 Similar longstanding discrepancies in access to health care, insurance status, quality of care, and af fordabiUty of care would also appear to leave little room for optimism.13 Methods Our assessment, which employed the speaker evaluation form presented in Appendix 1, encompassed a number of traditional variables cited above. Results from this portion of the questionnaire as well as an overall conference Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, Vol. 2, No. 1, Summer 1991 210 Impact of Conference Presentations evaluation form (Appendix 2) will be used internally as part of an ongoing effort to improve the usefulness of the Institute on Health Care for the Poor and Underserved's annual conferences. Optimism was assessed by the addition of two items to the speaker evaluation forms: 1. Please rank your degree of optimism/pessimism about the likelihood of future effective solutions to the problems raised in this presentation. 0 12 3 4 5 6 Pessimistic Optimistic 2. Please indicate the extent to which the speaker's presentation caused you to feel more optimistic or more pessimistic about the potential for solutions to the problems discussed in the presentation. 0 12 3 4 5 6 More Pessimistic More Optimistic We used these two statements to test the hypotheses that 1) there is significant pessimism concerning problems related to the health care of the poor and underserved, and 2) conference presentations increase optimism concerning these problems. Results Table 1 is a statistical representation of the responses to both statements for all speakers (Figure 1). While these data reveal two nearly normal distributions , both lean slightly to the right of the Likert Scale midpoint. This would indicate that the collective audiences were relatively optimistic from the start (Statement 1) and became more optimistic as a result of the presentations (Statement 2). TABLE 1 STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF RESPONSES TO ALL SPEAKERS FOR STATEMENTS 1 AND 2 STATEMENT 1 STATEMENT 2 Mean 3.89 3.83 Median 4 4 Mode 4 3 Mode Frequency 231 of 675 203 of 603 Standard Deviation 1.14 1.06 Skewness -0.18 0.06 Kurtosis -0.29 -0.24 ________Ernst, Francis, Oazait, et al.__________________211 HGURE1 RESPONSES TO STATEMENTS 1 AND 2, ALL PRESENTATIONS COMBINED The response distributions for each speaker, however, varied considerably . While numerous comparisons were possible, a selected set of response distributions is presented here to illustrate the contrast in the impact of two presentations. As Figure 2 indicates, the distributions of responses to Statement 1 for Speaker A and Speaker B were nearly identical, with both skewed sUghtly in the direction of optimism. Friedman's non-parametric ANOVA Chi Square analysis (CSS: STATISTIC A, Statsoft, Tulsa, OK) confirms the similarity of the distributions (ANOVA Chi Square=0.38, df=l, p=.54). However, analysis of responses to Statement 2, which measured change in optimism, reveals that Speaker B had significantly more impact on audience optimism than did Speaker A(ANOVA ChiSquare=4.23, df=l,p=.04). This effectis clearly evident in Figure 3. Discussion Our hypothesis concerning relative pessimism about issues related to health care for the poor and underserved...