Internal and external coalition functioning is an important predictor of coalition success that has been linked to perceived coalition effectiveness, coalition goal achievement, coalition ability to support evidence-based programs, and coalition sustainability. Understanding which aspects of coalition functioning best predict coalition success…

Members in the prevention and treatment fields continue to examine how to most effectively assess and label high volume alcohol consumption. Terms such as "binge" drinking have resulted in considerable controversy and debate. Conventionally the criteria for assessing high-risk drinking includes: five or more drinks for men and four or more drinks…

The Extended Adolescent Injury Checklist (E-AIC), a self-report measure of injury based on the model of the Adolescent Injury Checklist (AIC), was developed for use in the evaluation of school-based interventions. The three stages of this development involved focus groups with adolescents and consultations with medical staff, pilot testing of the…

In this article, the authors clarify the role of the leadership team, providing a rationale for one integrated team to examine academic, social, and behavioral programming, with careful attention to including all key stakeholders. Next, the authors discuss the procedures for teaching all key stakeholders the comprehensive, integrated, three-tiered…

The "Viennese Instrument for Suicidality in Correctional Institutions" (VISCI) presented here is based on the results of a large case-control study and on research on literature examining suicide prevention in general and in the prison population in particular. The aim of this study was to validate the properties of the VISCI to differentiate…

The authors reviewed the acculturation literature with the goal of identifying measures used to assess acculturation in Hispanic populations in the context of studies of health knowledge, attitudes, and behavior change. Twenty-six acculturation measures were identified and summarized. As the Hispanic population continues to grow in the United…

Central to the development of culturally competent violence prevention programs for Hispanic youth is the development of psychometrically sound violence risk and outcome measures for this population. A study was conducted to determine the psychometric properties of two commonly used violence measures, in this case for Mexican American adolescent…

There is evidence to suggest that the effects of behavioral interventions may be limited to specific types of individuals, but methods for evaluating such outcomes have not been fully developed. This study proposes the use of finite mixture models to evaluate whether interventions, and, specifically, group randomized trials, impact participants…

Community coalitions (CCs) have labored with some difficulty to demonstrate empirical evidence of effectiveness in preventing a wide range of adolescent problem behaviors. Training and technical assistance (TA) have been identified as important elements in promoting improved functioning of CCs. A reliable, valid, and inexpensive method to assess…

Difficulties involved with the evaluation of drug abuse prevention programs are numerous. Tentative Drug Use Scale (TDUS) was designed in response to a number of specific problems associated with obtaining behavioral data. Advantages of this scale over others are discussed. Reliability and validity information are provided. (Author)

This paper reports on the development of an empirically valid and reliable assessment instrument that identifies areas of need in violence prevention skills within the student population. The completed instrument should allow a school district to choose a curriculum that aligns with their identified need at each developmentally-appropriate level…

Documenting treatment integrity is an important issue in research and practice in any discipline concerned with prevention and intervention. However, consensus concerning the dimensions of treatment integrity and how they should be measured has yet to emerge. Advances from three areas in which significant treatment integrity work has taken…

A qualitative case study and monitoring data complemented a study of the evaluation of a health promotion program (Project LIFE) conducted in 23 rubber-producing plants in the United States. The study illustrates assessment of threats to internal validity, including the degree to which the planned intervention was actually implemented. (SLD)

The purpose of this study was to develop a valid and reliable instrument to measure the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) constructs of smoking refusal skill-efficacy, positive smoking refusal outcome expectations & importance and negative smoking refusal outcome expectations & importance. This article details the rigorous instrument development…

Over the years, various psychologists have issued calls for greater attention to a science of positive psychology, which focuses on studying conditions that promote optimal human and societal development. Recent calls (e.g., McCullough and Snyder, 2000; Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) have furthered interest in studies of the nature and…