Date of Conferral

2017

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Public Health

Advisor

Michael Dunn

Abstract

The strategic prevention framework (SPF) is a data-driven operating system to assist designing evidence-based substance abuse prevention programs. The study performed here was to assess the effectiveness of the SPF as a prevention planning system. One purpose of this study was to determine the implementation fidelity of the programs that used the SPF process; the other purpose was to assess effectiveness of the SPF process. This study utilized a set of data collected by the national cross site evaluation team on all jurisdictions that implemented the SPF. A subset of communities collected and reported at least 2 pre-implementation and at least 2 post implementation outcomes data. The minimum sample size for the study was determined by using Cohen's d criteria. The assessments were performed using both qualitative and quantitative methods by using data collected from multiple levels with a quasi-experimental design. The qualitative data were analyzed using qualitative software with key word searches to examine implementation processes, and the quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential methods such as Student t tests to examine and compare outcomes. Results show that the communities in the study implemented the SPF process with fidelity and that there were changes in desired directions. Factors related to improvements include sufficient internal resources and monitoring follow-through. This research has important implications for social change since substance abuse is a major social issue that has consequences across life span. Recent studies have shown that many behavioral problems have similar risk factors and that improvements for some behavioral problems will most likely have beneficial effects on other related problems.

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