August 10, 2021
Reporting Contacts Q&A: Program Assistants and Office Professionals
We've received a couple questions this summer about reporting related to program assistants and office professionals.
Q. Our 4-H program assistant conducts educational programs. Should they record their direct education contacts in PEARS and is there a way that those contacts can be connected to the 4-H Youth Development agent?
A. Yes, the 4-H program assistant should report direct education contacts in PEARS using their own user account and password. (If you aren't certain whether you have a user account, email me to set one up (lchandle@ksu.edu).
In order to connect those contacts to the agent, the agent needs to create the program activity – fill out the required fields to create the program activity such as name, reporting period, program area, site, etc., on the first page and then add the program assistant as a collaborator and give them permission to view and edit the data. Once that’s done, the program assistant can add the demographic data for that activity.
Q. As an office professional, I often provide customers with KSRE fact sheets to help answer their questions when the agent isn’t available. Is that a direct contact and should I report that in PEARS?
A. Yes, that would be considered a direct education contact. There are two ways for those contacts to be reported. Office professionals can provide the total number of direct contacts for that quarter to an agent to report in PEARS or the office professional can record those contacts directly in PEARS as long as they have a user account. Race, ethnicity and gender (REG) are recorded as unknown unless you or an agent has already collected REG for that individual during another educational program.