How can you measure success or fine-tune your efforts to deliver the most radon risk reduction?
In my last blog, I laid out some ideas about how to work with agents, brokers and others to bring radon into the residential real estate transaction in a way that benefits both consumers and agents. I suggested that radon leaders should engage real estate agents and brokers directly, especially through continuing education courses. In this blog, I want to take up the issue of how to measure success – that is, how to figure out if you are making progress and helping achieve real radon risk reduction and how to adjust your efforts if you find that they are not getting the results you would like.
To start, its necessary to admit the sobering fact that progress is difficult to measure. In a perfect world, we would have hard information – numbers and statistics – showing how real estate training efforts saved lives and reduced risks. We know that the ultimate measure of success in any radon activity is radon risk reduction. If we could somehow show a direct relationship between training and education efforts and increased radon testing and remediation we could make a near bullet-proof argument for effectiveness. Unfortunately, it’s not easy, and may not even be possible, to demonstrate a link between real estate transactions and risk reduction or lives saved.
There are many reasons why we cannot often connect these activities. There is the issue of data. We rarely have good information about radon testing in real estate transactions, and even if such information is available, we cannot tell whether an increase in testing resulted from better educated agents, or some other factor, such as radon in the media or other public health outreach. By the same token, a decrease in testing might be due to market forces (fewer homes being sold) or a “seller’s” market, where competition forces buyers to accept properties without much negotiation, so contingencies such as radon testing are a lot less likely. The bottom line is that as appealing as it sounds to measure the risk reduction impact of real estate education, its probably not really feasible.
Instead, it is probably best to concentrate on several easier to measure, but nonetheless important, endpoints, such as:
• the number of real estate professionals trained;
• the geographical areas in which training takes place; and
• the training evaluations.
These data are easier to collect, and are valuable in assessing progress. The larger the number of trained real estate professionals, the more likely that radon will be discussed in the transaction. Also, as greater and greater numbers of real estate licensees become knowledgeable about radon, the more difficult it is for any particular agent to argue that radon disclosure is somehow unique or not typical. The geographical areas can indicate whether training is being conducted strategically, especially in areas of the state where higher radon potential areas might be located. And training evaluations can tell you whether you are reaching your audience. Of course, that is the most vital piece of progress. If real estate professionals understand radon, and you are more likely to enlist them in helping get the word out about its hazards and how to fix radon problems. Also, good evaluations make a strong case for continuing educational efforts, which are important because new real estate licensees are entering the business every year. It is critical that educational efforts remain sustaining, because repeating radon training year after year gives you greater opportunity to reach a higher percentage of real estate licensees.
Course evaluations are also useful in helping to understand how to fine-tune your training. A careful review of these will tell you what parts of your curriculum are working, and which need revising. You can also learn quite a bit about your audiences. Radon training is governed by the same three rules as real estate marketing. Often what matters most is location, location, location. You might find that what works in one part of your state falls flat in another. By paying attention to the information in your course evaluations, you can shape your message more effectively for the local real estate culture.
While measuring success in real estate training is not easy or straightforward, it is possible to make a strong case that your training is effective – and producing results – if you are training in high radon potential areas, getting strong reviews for your training courses, and repeating training efforts so that a strong base of informed real estate licensees is being established and maintained. In some places, where we have data about residential testing and remediation, it might be possible to connect the training to increased testing. While it is not likely that this data is available we can still think about how we might want to go about collecting it. In the meantime, you can make a strong argument for effectiveness looking at geography, evaluations and sustainability in training.
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