U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Prevention Plus III: Assessing Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Programs at the School and Community Level; a Four- Step Guide to Useful Program Assessment

NCJ Number
161250
Author(s)
J A Linney; A Wandersman
Date Published
1991
Length
468 pages
Annotation
This workbook provides a step-by-step approach to assessing alcohol and other drug prevention programs at the school and community levels.
Abstract
The program assessment described is a four-step model: goal and desired outcome identification, process assessment, outcome assessment, and impact assessment. One section of the workbook describes the logic of program assessment and the four-step approach to assessment; it addresses the benefits and some of the costs and fears of program assessment and evaluation. A section on prevention briefly describes basic concepts of prevention and specifies programming and special considerations in evaluating prevention programs. The section on program assessment plans describes the plan for collecting information about program effectiveness and the confidence with which the information can be interpreted. Pre-program assessment, post-program assessment, and other aspects of program assessment design are discussed. The core of the workbook explains how to use the workbook to evaluate the user's own program. Much of it addresses specific worksheets used in evaluating any of 50 types of activities that are commonly used in alcohol and other drug-prevention programs. A section on assessment measures includes questionnaires and survey instruments that can be used to measure the program outcomes and impact the user hopes to achieve from local prevention programs. Appended listing of State RADAR (Regional Alcohol and Drug Awareness Resource) Network Centers and a 34-item selected bibliography