Immunopaedia considers it very important to continuously assess the effectiveness of what it is doing. To this effect, we have put in place a well-developed monitoring and evaluation system for each of our programme components.

As a first step, we conducted a 6-month formative research component to get a sense of who our target constituency should be, what they want and what kinds of approaches would work in making immunology more accessible to the non-specialist.

Next, we engaged monitoring and evaluation experts to work with us in putting together a log frame and research protocol. Our current monitoring and evaluation framework starts with a series of baseline data collection steps, including a survey amongst 200-300 potential users of Immunopaedia components that captures their pre-participation basic immunology knowledge and attitudes toward immunology in general and its relevance in their professional lives. We plan to follow up with these individuals periodically over the next 18 months as they become involved with various aspects of Immunopaedia to gauge any changes and get a sense of their reactions to the programme. We will also undertake periodic qualitative assessments in the form of in-depth interviews with Immunopaedia users to get a sense of their overall experience with the programme.

Each component of Immunopaedia (the website, the clinical research bursary and the workshops) also has individual monitoring and evaluation activities. For example, for the website we will track user patterns, time spent online, compile knowledge data through post-learning self-assessment exercises at the end of each learning module, and follow up with selected website visitors through in-depth interviews.