title: Does attitude hinder or help selecting evaluation questions?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Positive attitude leads to a more successfully implementation of a change. We investigated the effect of attitudes of stakeholders toward a program on their prioritization of the program components for selecting the key question of a theory-driven evaluation with concept mapping method.
  
  
  METHODS
  During a brainstorming session, stated statements defined the program components. Then they were sorted and rated regarding the importance and feasibility of them. In addition, the attitudes of participants were assessed by a 30 items questionnaire extracted from a pool named as "50 reasons not to change." We determined and compared the consensus points of participants both with and without of considering their attitudes toward the program.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The participants were divided into two groups of high (45% - above the mean) and low (55% - below the mean) attitude. Brainstorming discussions generated a pool of almost 120 statements which were subsequently refined to 44 statements. Matching the rating scores between two attitude groups yielded a consensus at a higher priority than the other method.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In the concept mapping procedure, it is crucial to reach the consensus with respect to the participants' attitude, rather than the similarity of mean scores of feasibility and importance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Behzad
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Shams
authors.affiliation: Education Development Office (EDO), School of Medicine, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Mostafa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dehghani
keywords: Attitude; evaluation question; ladder graph; value