Does attitude hinder or help selecting evaluation questions?

BACKGROUND: Positive attitude leads to a more successfully implementation of a change. We investigated the effect of attitudes of stakeholders toward a program on their prioritization of the program components for selecting the key question of a theory-driven evaluation with concept mapping method. MATERIALS AND METHODS: During a brainstorming session, stated statements defined the program components. Then they were sorted and rated regarding the importance and feasibility of them. In addition, the attitudes of participants were assessed by a 30 items questionnaire extracted from a pool named as “50 reasons not to change.” We determined and compared the consensus points of participants both with and without of considering their attitudes toward the program. RESULTS: The participants were divided into two groups of high (45% - above the mean) and low (55% - below the mean) attitude. Brainstorming discussions generated a pool of almost 120 statements which were subsequently refined to 44 statements. Matching the rating scores between two attitude groups yielded a consensus at a higher priority than the other method. CONCLUSION: In the concept mapping procedure, it is crucial to reach the consensus with respect to the participants’ attitude, rather than the similarity of mean scores of feasibility and importance.