Limitations
This evaluation has several limitations. One is the inability to weight the importance of different outcomes or partnership characteristics of the projects. For instance, should having written agreements be weighted the same as sharing power throughout the study? It is a value judgment to decide that these two partnership characteristics, when both performed well, should be weighted the same.
This evaluation is further limited in that it focuses on participants’ perceptions, experiences, and views, and not on any external measures or validation. However, as individuals within each team were interviewed individually, the researcher was able to rely on consistency among team members to validate the findings.
The limited number of projects (seven) included in this study and the qualitative research methods used limit the ability to generalize the results to other projects.
Failure to achieve some of the outcomes is possibly due to external forces (i.e., lack of media interest in certain communities could limit media outcomes). Additionally, as this evaluation captured a particular point in time, additional publications and funding that have derived from these projects were not included (although anecdotal reports show successful outcomes in these two areas).
Finally, the evaluator did not consider whether the results of the research projects evaluated were important or statistically significant; all of the studies listed as “completed” by the CBCRP within the time frame were included. This is a limitation because if the seven projects evaluated here do not have statistically significant results or are less important to the field of breast cancer research, they can be expected to have fewer outcomes and little impact.
