From Framework to Practice: Evaluating a Hurricane Preparedness Campaign for Children by Neha Trivedi, Shannon McNamara, Rachel Van Vleet, and Amelia Burke-Garcia

Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.

Hi! My name is Dr. Neha Trivedi, and I’m a Senior Research Scientist at NORC at the University of Chicago (NORC). I’m joined by my colleague, Shannon McNamara, of the American Red Cross and my other NORC colleagues Rachel Van Vleet, MPH, Research Scientist, and Dr. Amelia Burke-Garcia, director of NORC’s Center for Health Communication Science.

This post follows up on our earlier piece, Evaluating Communication Campaigns in Today’s Media Environment, which explored the challenges health campaign evaluators face in a fragmented, fast-moving media landscape. Here, we discuss how those ideas played out in practice through an evaluation of the American Red Cross’s (ARC) Prepare for Hurricanes campaign.

The Prepare for Hurricanes campaign was designed to help children ages 5–10 better understand hurricane preparedness and feel more confident taking action during disasters. This evaluation examined campaign recall and comprehension, understanding of hurricane alerts and preparedness actions, and support for preparedness behaviors before and during storms.

Hot Tip: Embedding campaign materials like videos directly into surveys can help evaluators use aided recall to gauge awareness, comprehension of the campaign’s message, and intended behavior change.

To assess these measures, we conducted a cross-sectional survey using NORC’s AmeriSpeak® Panel, a nationally representative probability-based panel. The 31-item survey was fielded from October 30 to November 25, 2025, and included 162 parents of children ages 5–10 living in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

The survey included questions on demographics, household preparedness knowledge and planning, campaign recall and comprehension, preparedness behaviors during a subsequent hurricane, and perceived mitigation of storm-related impacts. Parents viewed the Watch vs. Warning PSA during the survey, allowing us to measure these key measures.

Hot Tip: When target behaviors depend on events outside a campaign’s control – like when and where a hurricane hits – measures like confidence-building and comprehension can serve as strong proxies for campaign effectiveness, even absent an observable change in behavior itself.

After viewing the Watch vs. Warning PSA, parents described it as clear, easy to understand, and well-suited for children. The PSA did not introduce entirely new concepts for most families but reinforced existing knowledge and increased parents’ confidence in explaining hurricane alerts to their children.

Don’t overlook effects like these. Preparedness behavior change is hard to observe when no actual storm occurs during the evaluation window – but boosting confidence and emotional readiness can still be a powerful, measurable form of impact, and one that positions families to act when a storm does come.

Lessons Learned: Strengthening Findings Through Multiple Data Sources

This evaluation generated valuable insights from survey data alone – confirming the PSA was clear, well-received, and effective at reinforcing key messages. As we highlighted in our earlier post on this blog, layering in additional data sources can help fill gaps and build even greater confidence in findings like these. Data sources such as media metrics, observational data, social media listening, or qualitative interviews can illuminate how and why audiences engage with campaign content. Combining these sources strengthens validity through triangulation, situates survey findings in real-world context, and helps identify which aspects of a campaign resonate, with whom, and in what ways.

Applying NORC’s Health Communication Campaign Evaluation Model in Future Campaigns

Building on this, the Prepare for Hurricanes evaluation points to several opportunities to bring a multi-source approach into future communication evaluation efforts. This might include:

• Media metrics to assess reach, impressions, and online engagement with PSA assets;
• Qualitative interviews or focus groups with parents, children, or educators to explore how messages are interpreted and used;
• Longitudinal surveys to track changes in preparedness knowledge, confidence, and behaviors over time.

Integrating multiple forms of data would enable a more comprehensive understanding of how preparedness messages influence families before, during, and after emergencies. This evaluation lays the groundwork for future multi-modal, triangulated evaluations that can more fully capture the impact of these communication efforts.

Get Involved

Join NORC health communication scientists as we advance health campaign evaluation leveraging multi-mode designs. Learn more by contacting our team at healthcommsci@norc.org. To learn more about the American Red Cross’s Prepare for Hurricanes campaign, click here.

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