Measuring the Quality of Delivery of Prevention

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Quality of delivery is known to moderate the effectiveness of drug abuse prevention programs. As research-based programs become widely disseminated, having tools for assessing quality of delivery becomes important for documenting and understanding the conditions under which programs succeed and fail. There are currently no standard methods for measuring the quality with which prevention programs are delivered. The goal of this project is to create a standardized tool for assessing quality of delivery for research-based drug abuse prevention programs. The proposed measure will document, through observations, interviews, and the search of documents, four dimensions of quality of delivery: adherence, adaptation, interactivity, and dosage. Phase I will include the following: (1) The completion of a focus group study with prevention researchers, program administrators, program developers, and policy makers to define criteria for assessing quality of delivery. (2) The development of a tool that will assess adherence, adaptation, interactivity, and dosage using succinct measures that have high inter-rater reliability. (3) The completion of two formal psychometric studies. The first will be conducted with graduate research assistants who will assess quality of delivery using videotapes and archived information from a previously completed study of Chicago teachers. The second psychometric study will involve community service agencies who will be observed as they deliver prevention programming to students. In both studies, non-researcher observers and researchers with expertise in quality of implementation will provide ratings which will be examined for inter-rater reliability. We hypothesize that the results of analysis will demonstrate the assessment to be highly reliable, easy-to-use, appropriate to the task, and of defined value to potential users. (4) A set of prototype training materials for local program observers will be developed and examined by target users for feasibility. As research-based prevention programs become widely disseminated, having tools for assessing quality of delivery becomes important for documenting and understanding the conditions under which programs succeed and fail. There are currently no standard methods for measuring the quality with which prevention programs are delivered. The goal of this project is to create a standardized tool for assessing quality of delivery for research-based drug abuse prevention programs.