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Effects of Communities That Care on the Adoption and Implementation Fidelity of Evidence-Based Prevention Programs in Communities: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial

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Abstract

This paper describes findings from the Community Youth Development Study (CYDS), a randomized controlled trial of the Communities That Care (CTC) prevention system, on the adoption and implementation fidelity of science-based prevention programming in 24 communities. Data were collected using the Community Resource Documentation (CRD), which entailed a multi-tiered sampling process and phone and web-based surveys with directors of community-based agencies and coalitions, school principals, service providers, and teachers. Four years after the initiation of the CTC prevention system, the results indicated increased use of tested, effective prevention programs in the 12 CTC intervention communities compared to the 12 control communities, and significant differences favoring the intervention communities in the numbers of children and families participating in these programs. Few significant differences were found regarding implementation quality; respondents from both intervention and control communities reported high rates of implementation fidelity across the services provided.

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Notes

  1. At the conclusion of the Diffusion Project, 13 pairs of communities were identified as eligible for the CYDS, and 12 pairs agreed to participate; see Hawkins et al. (2008) for details.

  2. Coalitions eligible for inclusion were those defined as “a group of community leaders, service providers, and/or community residents representing different organizations and sectors of the community that meet to plan, coordinate, and integrate the community’s prevention activities.” The 2005 and 2007 coalition interviews in the intervention communities included the 12 coalitions that were trained in the CTC system, as well as any other coalitions operating in these communities. Most control communities also had prevention-oriented coalitions, though their characteristics tended to differ from CTC coalitions (Arthur et al. 2010).

  3. A list of the programs included on the Program Interviews and in the Teacher Surveys is available upon request from Blair Brook-Weiss (bbrooke@u.washington.edu) at the Social Development Research Group.

  4. If multiple respondents from the same community reported implementation of the same program, the program was counted only once in the adoption measure.

  5. Fidelity scores were not calculated for the 2002 Program Interview or the 2005 Teacher Survey data, given that fewer items assessing fidelity were included on these surveys and because only a few programs were identified in each of the four Program Interviews conducted in 2002.

  6. These figures represent the total number of programs reported in the year prior to the survey administration. Given the possibility that programs identified at earlier time points were also identified at later time points, adding these results across the three times could over-estimate the total number of programs implemented in communities. The same is true of the program participation results.

  7. Respondents on the Social Competence Interviews could have reported adoption of the same programs as teachers, given that community/school collaborations did occur; thus, adding up the participation rates across the Program Interviews and Teacher Surveys would over-estimate the total number of residents served.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    Abigail A. Fagan

  2. Social Development Research Group, University of Washington School of Social Work, 9725 3rd Ave. NE, Suite 401, Seattle, WA, 98115, USA

    Michael W. Arthur, Koren Hanson, John S. Briney & J. David Hawkins

Authors
  1. Abigail A. Fagan
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  2. Michael W. Arthur
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  3. Koren Hanson
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  4. John S. Briney
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  5. J. David Hawkins
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Abigail A. Fagan.

Additional information

This work was supported by research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01 DA10768-01A1 and R01 DA015183-01A1) with co-funding from the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention.

The authors gratefully acknowledge contributions made to this paper by Eric Brown and other members of the Community Youth Development Study research team, as well as to residents of the 24 communities participating in the study.

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Fagan, A.A., Arthur, M.W., Hanson, K. et al. Effects of Communities That Care on the Adoption and Implementation Fidelity of Evidence-Based Prevention Programs in Communities: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial. Prev Sci 12, 223–234 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-011-0226-5

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