The actors within the case were as follows: the author and Gerald Weseen, Director of Communications at the New Brunswick Department of Health and Community Services (DHCS), were members of the DHCS department of communications. Stephanie Smith was the first member of the department of policy and planning who held responsibility for the planning and implementation of the Breast Cancer Screening program within the DHCS. She was later replaced by Chris Heissner. Diane Novaczek and Kathy Henderson were the field personnel responsible for the program's implementation in Health Region 2. Sylvana Bosca was responsible for the implementation of the program in Health Region 6.

The author acknowledges a bias towards the importance of developing communications programs that take into consideration the illiterate populations contained in the target audience of such a program. It is important to note that at the beginning of the author's involvement in the case featured in the primary research, the author did not have such a bias. His observations of the development of the case led him to this bias. The author does not believe that the bias that he developed led him to inaccurately record the facts of the case.

The following research methods were used to investigate the objectives of this dissertation.

The primary research was conducted through interviews, conversations and meetings. Primary data source research was conducted through gathering materials from the author's workplace (which became his former workplace during the course of the research) and from related workplaces. Observational research was conducted during the time of the author's employment at the DHCS, from October to December 1994. The author conducted interviews with field personnel in 1996 and 1997 to provide information on some results of the program. Interviews were conducted with Mr. Weseen in 1994 and 1995 and Mr. Heissner in 1997 to provide more information about the design and implementation of the communications effort.

Secondary research took the form of topic searches on data bases and computer networks and academic texts. The New Brunswick Statistics Agency and the Canadian federal government body Statistics Canada provided statistics.