Health In Your World Project Evaluation

In early 2004 Explorit Science Center (Explorit) contracted with Visitor Studies Services (VSS) to design and conduct an evaluation of Explorit's Health In Your World Project (HIYW). HIYW is a traveling, science-based health education program for children and adults in low-income communities. HIYW features interactive experiments designed to make learning about the human body, health, and healthy choices fun and accessible. The program serves students in grades K-6, and is designed to engage parents and involve them as an integral part of the learning process. The HIYW Project was developed in response to the need for substantive health education programs at the elementary school level. HIYW enjoys major funding from its founding partner, Kaiser Permanente, and operating support from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Other HIYW Project funders include Wells Fargo. Typically, the HIYW event is mounted at a school or community center and is open to visitors for 90 minutes. Volunteers from the host site attend a brief training about facilitating the stations before the doors open. Data collection for this evaluation was conducted at three such events. A fourth event where data were collected was in a small children's museum (Fairy Tale Town, Sacramento) and was open for four hours. At that event, data collectors conducted interviews for 90 minutes; questionnaires were collected during most of the four-hour period. The appendix of this report includes questionnaires (english/spanish) and interview survey forms (english/spanish).