This presentation for a Latino community radio panel at the National Federation of Community Broadcasters' 2010 annual conference reviews the initial Corporation for Public Broadcasting commitment to radio as a vehicle for enhancing civic dynamics and non-formal learning and argues that well-designed evaluation can go beyond the dry metrics of standard audience research so as to provide a practically useful means of facilitating community broadcasters' communication with their audiences.

This presentation highlights the six necessary components of a media outreach campaign in order to demonstrate impact on the target audience. This is an approach that goes beyond a focus on audience size to address the quality of listenership.

This presentation highlights the tradeoffs and considerations entailed in designing an evaluation of a program targeting low-literate populations. It also suggests a strategy for using the evaluation process itself to heighten the impact of the campaign.

This study, conducted as part of an evaluation of a Rockefeller Foundation grant to Radio Bilingue, is based on a binational audience survey of listeners to the station's programming on "La Hora Mixteca" and collaboration with Mexico's indigenous-language public radio stations established by the Commission on Indigenous Development. Based on interviews in indigenous migrant communities in Baja California, California, and Oaxaca, the study concluded that community radio played a unique role in the life of "network communities" by creating a "virtual agora" where social and civic relationships could develop and be nurtured across borders.

The report presents findings from our audience research on health campaigns conducted over several years by Radio Bilinguë, a Spanish-language community public radio network. The discussion includes estimates of audience size, analysis of its ability to reach low-literate farmworkers, recent immigrants, and parents of pre-school age children, and assessment of campaign impact on listeners' attitudes and aspirations.