The Use of Theory-Relevant Goals as a Means of Enhancing Utilization

This article describes an evaluation of the Rural Development Outreach Project (RDOP), a broad-aim rural development project designed to improve the quality of rural life by providing personnel and resources from the university to aid in the solution of problems in the community. Rather than assessing the outcomes of the project, this evaluation used a goal attainment scaling approach to examine the extent to which the individual programs comprising the project followed principles of rural development theory in establishing their services. Results indicated that an integrated approach to problems and active participation and involvement of community members was most likely to lead to above expected goal attainment.