A newsletter evaluation using the title rating method

The Title Rating Method is used to measure readership interests and predict readership topics for future issues, in message ideas. This methodology was used to plan types of articles in a newsletter published through the Cancer Communication Network contract. This article describes evaluation results of the newsletter for health professionals, North Carolina Cancergram. Retrospective and prospective titles were assigned to seven categories: psychosocial, treatment, drugs, nursing issues, rehabilitation, education, and detection. Interest in the titles in each category was evaluated according to five occupational groups: nurses, pharmacists, physicians, allied health, and others. The rank order of most popular to least popular categories was: drugs, treatment, education, psychosocial, rehabilitation, detection, and nursing issues. The most popular article overall across occupational groups was an article directed primarily to physicians, “Informing the patient requires honesty, sensitivity.” The readership was primarily white, female, over 35 years of age with a college degree or higher. Most of the readership work in a health related setting although 67.6 percent of the respondents spent less than ten percent of their time working with cancer patients. This is in keeping with the intent of the publication to reach health professionals outside the Cancer Center.