Methodological challenges in evaluating a play on rural youth attrition

What impact or effect does a play have on its audience? This question has plagued dramatists for years (Saldana & Wright). Theatre-in-education (TIE) dramatists are particularly interested to explore this issue since they are required to satisfy their funding bodies who wish to confirm that their investment has been worthwhile. A TIE designer also needs to know that the play achieved its objectives and that students learned what was intended. Educational administrators also need to know that students learned something in order that they may report to parents and other stakeholders. However, finding an answer to this question is particularly difficult due to the nature of the TIE play (O'Toole & Bundy, 1993; Robinson, 1993). It is well known in educational contexts that 'one-off educational experiences are not as effective as experiences that are continuous with past and future learning. . Bruner (1974) created the idea of the spiral curriculum in which educators returned to earlier concepts. Also, Skinner (1971) and Merrett and Wheldall (1990) espoused the idea of reinforcement and recapitulation or coming back to the original ideas to strengthen them. By their nature, TIE plays often tour to various schools and towns, perform to one audience and then move to the next site. Therefore, dramatists must ask: What type of experience would be effective in terms of achieving the objectives of the play? What types of 'one-off experiences would be useful in making an enduring impact on the audience? The difficulty of assessing the impact of purpose-made, theatre-in-education plays is evident from the low numbers of evaluations appearing in the literature. Our previous evaluation of a theatre-in-education play on school bullying (Cassidy & Watts, 2000, 2001; Davis, Cassidy & Watts, 2003) utilised Boal's (1979) 'theatre of the oppressed' as a theoretical framework, and an interpretive, qualitative methodology. Over 2,300 students provided mostly qualitative responses to a written questionnaire in order to elucidate the play's impact on school bullying. In our recent research on youth attrition from rural communities, we assess the effectiveness of the play using a written open-ended questionnaire at the conclusion of the play and interviews with pairs of selected students who saw the play.