Evaluation Method – Ivy Quits Smoking

After meeting with my client, Ivy, for some time now, developing a plan for evaluating

her efforts to quit smoking is critical. Ivy is a 22-year-old college student who has been trying to

quit smoking for a few months. She recently started a new job on top of being a full-time student,

so the last few weeks have been more stressful that usual. Upon initially meeting Ivy, together

we developed a plan to help her stop smoking for good. Some interventions in place included

switching to non-tobacco nicotine products when a craving arises, leaving her nicotine device in

her car during work so that it would be out of sight, joining a virtual support group, and the

utilization of nicotine patches. Ivy allowed herself to switch to non-tobacco nicotine products as

she can slowly ween herself to a lower and lower nicotine percentage.

The method I will be using to evaluate her progress in quitting smoking is through direct

observation. Direct observation is a method used to observe progress in the environment that the

problem is occurring in (USAID, 1996). For Ivy’s scenario, direct observation is a valid

evaluation method because most of her craving and poor smoking habits happen when she is not

in the presence of me – as her social worker – or in her support group. It is important that Ivy’s

progress is studied in its natural setting – this will allow a broader understanding of the progress

or lack thereof (USAID, 1996). Not only will the direct observation method assess the progress

in its natural state, it will also help shine light on areas that require improvement; therefore, we

may be able to identify which areas of our plan were poorly implemented and what may require

more input (USAID, 1996).

In order to engage in direct observation of Ivy’s progress with quitting smoking, we

could use frequency counting, time-sampling, or discriminated operants (Altmann, 1974). It is

also possible to do a combination of all three. For this study, we will be using time-sampling. Ivy
was instructed to divide her day into 4 different time intervals. There are 12am-6am, 6am-12pm,

12pm-6pm, and 6pm-12am. Within those 4 time intervals, Ivy was instructed to record the

amount of times she smoked a cigarette, used nicotine-alternate products, or had a craving. Due

to Ivy still beginning her journey to quit cigarettes, non-tobacco nicotine product usage was not

recorded for negative marks but was recorded to gauge nicotine usage. After using the method

for a month, we gathered the data and organized it into a graph format. Out of 4 week period, Ivy

smoked cigarettes 3 times. Ivy also noted that 2 of the times she smoked cigarettes it was due to

her alternate methods being unavailable at the time.

The direct observation method is more beneficial in this scenario because it provided

subjective, concrete data that can help gauge how much progress Ivy is having, not just how she

is feeling about the progress. This method was chosen over other methods because it provides

reliable data that was gathered by Ivy herself versus data that was collected from a survey or a

scale. One downside of this method of evaluation is that it is relying on the honor code with

clients. If a client is wanting to further along their sessions – for instance, in court-ordered

sessions – it might not be the most effective. However, due to Ivy choosing to contact a social

worker to help her with quitting smoking on her own volition, she is a more trustworthy

participant in the direct observation method.

 Reference

Altmann, J. (1974). Observational study of behavior: Sampling methods: Behavior, 49, 221 –

261.

USAID Center for Development Information and Evaluation (1996) Performance Monitoring &

Evaluation TIPS Using Direct Observation Techniques. USAID Center for Development

Information and Evaluation retrived from

https://web.archive.org/web/20130302141450/http://transition.usaid.gov/policy/evalweb/

documents/TIPS-UsingDirectObservationTechniques.pdf