Date: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Greetings! My name is Anna Davidson Abella, and I am an Applied Anthropologist and Assistant Research Professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa and the Chair of the AEA Behavioral Health TIG. I focus primarily on qualitative methods in behavioral health evaluation and my work spans numerous sectors (child welfare, criminal justice, education) and scopes (local, statewide, federal). I typically work on team-based projects, and in some instances, my colleagues and I have found it useful or necessary to do rapid assessment. Rapid assessment can be built into the evaluation design from the beginning, or it can be used in qualitative data analysis. I’d like to introduce a few methods that I have found helpful.
Rapid Ethnographic Assessment (REA) is a form of ethnography that is typically used to assess rapidly emerging events such as health epidemics, or cultural phenomena. My colleagues and I applied this approach during the COVID-19 pandemic while examining changes for families involved in child welfare services. This method is ideally team-based and involves identifying numerous stakeholders and data sources (interviews, focus groups, observations, policy documents) that can represent varying perspectives of an issue or event.
For more on methodological considerations and applications of Rapid Ethnographic Assessment, see Sangaramoorthy & Kroeger (2023).
RITA stands for Rapid Identification of Themes for Audio recordings, and it was developed by Jennifer Watling Neal and colleagues. RITA is focused on analyzing qualitative data, such as interviews, in a more expedited way while still allowing for robust identification of themes. This method uses audio recordings as the unit of analysis rather than transcripts, which can be time-consuming to produce and/or clean. “Code forms” are created from recordings and analysis is completed from these forms.
Two alternatives to this I’ve found valuable are 1) using traditional qualitative data analysis software like Atlas.ti and applying codes with evaluator comments about the content to audio or video segments, or 2) using an electronic form to document brief key themes or impressions immediately after each interview is conducted as a form of preliminary analysis.
To learn more about the RITA method for rapid theme identification from audio, see Neal et al. (2015).
The RADaR technique stands for Rigorous and Accelerated Data Reduction, and it involves using tables and spreadsheets to distill qualitative themes from transcripts through an iterative reduction process. This starts with large “chunks” of transcript data and continually refines the content over several phases, while remaining focused on key evaluation or research questions throughout the process. The final phase ideally results in language that can serve as the foundation for a final product – a presentation, report, or manuscript.
For a step-by-step overview of the RADaR technique for streamlining qualitative analysis, see Watkins (2017).
Lastly, if you receive the New Directions for Evaluation journal as an AEA member, you may notice that the most recent issue (Spring-Summer 2025) includes an article titled “Rapid Reconnaissance: Seeking Immediate Results” by Sarah Murray and Lyn Alderman. I invite you to add this to your resources for rapid assessment!
Whether you are designing an evaluation with efficiency in mind or you simply want to explore rapid assessment methods, I hope you’ve found these resources helpful in your journey!
The American Evaluation Association is hosting Behavioral Health TIG Week with our colleagues in Behavioral Health Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our Behavioral Health TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.