Evaluating health promotion programs in the workplace: Behavioral models versus financial models

This paper suggests that the future of occupational health promotion evaluation lies in the creative utilization of behavioral science models in an integrated manner with financial models of program evaluation. Evaluators must simultaneously ask 'Does the program work?' and 'At what cost?' Economic conditions may well dictate that both of these questions be answered. Further, it seems clear that researchers need not be bound to the impracticalities of true experimental design in order to evaluate program effectiveness. In addition, given the numerous potential tangible and intangible benefits to firms sponsoring occupational health promotion programs, evaluators should be equally concerned with controlling beta errors as they are with controlling alpha errors in test design; otherwise, they run the risk of prematurely cancelling potentially profitable investments before they come to fruition.