“Letter to my future self” as a device for assessing health education effectiveness

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Patient Education and Counseling

Abstract

Objective: To examine whether a “letter to my future self” analyzed using structural topic modeling (STM) represents a useful technique in revealing how participants integrate educational content into planned future behaviors. Methods: 453 club-sports athletes in a concussion-education randomized control study wrote two-paragraph letters describing what they hoped to remember after viewing one of three randomly assigned educational interventions. Results: A six-topic solution revealed three topics related to the content of the education and three topics related to the participant behavioral takeaways. The content-related topics reflected the educational content viewed. The behavioral takeaway topics indicated that the Consequence-based education was more likely to generate the Concussion Seriousness[CS:23%] topic while Traditional(24%) and Consequence-based(20%) interventions were more likely to generate the Responsibility for Brain Health[BH] topic. Traditional(21%) and Revised-symptom(17%) interventions were more likely to generate the Awareness and Action topics. Conclusion: Unstructured user-generated data in the form of a “letter to my future self” analyzed using structural topic modeling provides a novel evaluation of the present and likely future impact of educational interventions. Practice implications: Patient educators can enhance the effectiveness of education through the application of these methods to the evaluation of and innovation in programs.

DOI

10.1016/j.pec.2024.108217

Publication Date

6-1-2024

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