Community Mobilization for Prevention

Online Guide

Baseline Data

Initial observations and/or data about the priority area and priority population which is used as a basis for later comparison once a program/project/strategy has been implemented.

Benchmark

A standard; a point of reference that measures progress towards a particular indicator or performance goal.

Buffer

A term to describe an asset, protective factor, condition, behavior, or attitude that serves as a shield or insulator against a harmful condition.

Capacity

The various types and levels of resources that an individual, organization, or community group has at its disposal to meet its needs and/or goals.

Capacity Building

Developing core skills and capabilities (in an individual, organization or community group) to help ensure effectiveness and sustainability.

Coalition

A union of people and organizations working for a common cause.

Collaboration

A commitment to a relationship with mutual goals, jointly developed structure, shared responsibility, authority and accountability for success. Sharing of resources and rewards.

Community

An area or segment of the population that can be defined in terms of a geographical boundary or a common sense of identity and shared fate. Often there is an emotional connection to other members, common symbol systems, shared values and norms, mutual(although not necessarily equal)influence, common interests, and commitment of meeting shared needs.

Community Capacity

The characteristics of communities that affect their ability to identify, mobilize, and address social and public health concerns.

Community Indicators

A set of defined, measurable variables used to monitor the quality of a community with regard to its overall health, wellbeing and viability.

Community Tolerance

Community norms that indicate whether a community views problematic behavior as socially acceptable or actively encourages it.

Comparison Group

A group of individuals whose characteristics are similar to those of the program participants but who do not receive the program services, products, or activities being evaluated.

Conditions

The emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual climate that supports or discourages individual behaviors.

Continuum of Service

Prevention is part of an interrelated continuum of care that also includes intervention, treatment, and aftercare/maintenance.

Control Group

In evaluation, a group of individuals that is essentially the same as those receiving services, but does not receive the services.

Core Components

Program elements that are demonstrably essential to achieving positive outcomes.

CSAP

Center for Substance Abuse Prevention; the federal agency that administers funding for alcohol, tobacco and other drug prevention within the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association. (SAMHSA).

Cultural Competence

Refers to a system of policies, skills, and attitudes that enable an agency or an individual to provide services in a manner that effectively responds to differences in cultural beliefs, behaviors, and learning and communication styles.

Cultural Diversity

Differences in race, ethnicity, language, nationality, or religion among various groups of people.

Culture

The values, traditions, norms, customs, arts, history, folklore, and institutions that groups of people share.

Data

Information collected according to a methodology using specific research methods and instruments.

Data Analysis

The process of examining data and attributing meaning to it.

Data Driven

A process whereby decisions are informed by and tested against systematically gathered and analyzed information.

Decision Support System

An online aide to prevention providing access to best-practices databases, information libraries and practical tools for report writing, asset mapping and minimum data set management.

Defined Populations

The people whose attitudes, knowledge, skills, risks/assets, and behaviors are to be strengthened or changed. Also known as the target group, priority population, the population of interest or the target population/group.

Demographics

The characteristics of a human population, including sex, age, socioeconomic status, and so forth.

Domain

The spheres of influence in a person's life in which a risk factor or protective factor might occur, namely community, family, school, and peer/individual.

Effect

A result, impact, or outcome.

Effectiveness

The ability to achieve stated goals or objectives, judged in terms of outcomes and impact.

Ethnic

Belonging to a common group-often linked by race, nationality, and language-that shares a cultural heritage and/or origin.

Evaluation

A structured process used to collect and analyze data in order to answer two primary questions: (1) Is what we're doing working? And (2)If not, why not? The purpose of evaluation is to assist in improving the planning or implementation process.

Evidence-based Prevention

Strategies, interventions and products that have been evaluated and shown to have an effect on specific behaviors, norms related to these behaviors, or specific risk factors that have been linked to them.

Fidelity

Agreement of a replicated program model or strategy with the specification of the original.

Focus Group

A representative group of people questioned together about opinions, in a controlled setting with a prescribed format. Focus groups are widely used as a method of gathering qualitative data.

Framework

A general structure supporting the development of theory.

Goal

A goal is a broad, general statement concerning what a program intends to accomplish; goals chart direction and show where an organization is going.

Human Capacity/Resources

The collective knowledge, attitudes, motivation and skills of the program implementers and other stakeholders.

Immediate Outcome

The initial change in a sequence of changes expected to occur.

Impact

The long-term effect and/or influence of the intervention on the conditions described in baseline data.

Implementation Plan

A planning tool for the program management. The plan identifies step-by-step how an intervention/strategy or an overall scope of work will be accomplished.

In-Kind

Sources of support other than cash that will be used to fund proposed activities.

Incidence

A measure of the number of people who have initiated a behavior during a specific period of time.

Indicated Intervention Strategies

Are designed for individuals who are showing early danger signs, such as falling grades, sexual promiscuity, consumption of alcohol and other gateway drugs, but are not determined to be in need of treatment services.

Initiating

Get started.

Institute of Medicine (IOM) Prevention Classification

Includes universal programs that reach the general population, selective programs that target groups at risk or subsets of the general population, and indicated programs designed for people who exhibit risk-related behaviors.

Instrument

A device researchers use to collect data in organized fashion, such as a standardized survey or interview protocol.

Intermediate Outcomes

In a sequence of changes expected, these are expected to occur after some immediate outcomes, and prior to any long term outcomes occurring.

Intervention

An activity or set of activities with the intent to create behavior change.

Key Informant Interview

Interview with a member of, or someone who is knowledgeable about, the social phenomena you wish to study

Logic Model

A method of thinking through (or illustrating) a logical, sequential, causal chain in events.

Measures

The tools used to obtain the information or evidence.

Media Advocacy

The strategic use of media as a resource for advancing a social or public policy initiative.

Mission Statement

A broad general statement which reflects the operational philosophy of an organization or group. The mission identifies the group's or organization's constituency, role and responsibilities.

Needs Assessment

A rational approach to carefully collect, analyze, and interpret data to inform policy and program planning. Objective social indicator and survey data is used to quantify and describe the unique risk and protective factors.

Norms

People's attitudes and behaviors that are accepted, or even expected in a particular social context.

Objective

A specific statement of intended quantitative accomplishment which describe what will be attained and how attainment will be known.

Outcome Evaluation

A type of evaluation used to identify the results of a program's effort. It seeks to answer the question, "What difference did the program make?" It yields evidence about the effects of a program after a specified period of operation. A structured process used to collect and analyze data related to outcomes.

Outcome Indicators

Statements describing the interim changes in knowledge, attitude or behavior that take place revealing that a strategy is succeeding.

Outcome Performance Measures

Measures that gauge whether a goal or objective was met. They measure the results of program efforts and assess program impact and effectiveness.

Outcomes

Results; measurable changes or accomplishments that are achievable. Outcomes can be immediate, intermediate or long-term.

Pretest and Posttest

In research designs, the collection of measurements before and after an intervention to assess its effects.

Prevention

The active process of creating conditions or individual attributes that promote the well being of people; a proactive process that empowers individuals and systems to meet the challenges of life events and transitions by creating and reinforcing conditions that promote healthy behaviors and lifestyles.

Priority Population

The people whose attitudes, knowledge, skills, risks/assets, and behaviors are to be strengthened or changed. Also known as the defined population, target group, the population of interest or the target population/group.

Problem Statement

A brief summative description of the most important existing barriers to be overcome.

Process Evaluation

A structured process used to collect and analyze data around planning and implementation activities.

Program

Coordinated set of activities (strategies) designed to achieve specific objectives and outcomes over time.

Program Logic Model

Shows how all components of the program link together and lead to the achievement of program goals and outcomes.

Promising Programs

Promising programs are those that have been reasonably well evaluated, but positive finding are not yet consistent enough, or the evaluation implemented not yet rigorous enough, for the program to qualify as an effective program.

Protective Factors

Attitudes, behaviors, or beliefs that serve to buffer the negative effects of risks.

Qualitative

A term used to refer to information that is difficult to measure, count, or express in numerical terms.

Qualitative Data

In evaluation studies, contextual information that usually describes participants and interventions.

Quantitative

A term used to refer to information that can be expressed in numerical terms, counted, or compared on a scale (for example, the number of alcohol-related traffic accidents per month).

Quantitative Data

In evaluation studies, measures that capture changes in targeted outcomes (e.g., substance use) and intervening variables (e.g., attitudes toward substance use). The strength of quantitative data is their use in testing hypotheses and determining the strength and direction of effects.

Resilience

Refers to the ability of an individual to cope with or overcome negative effects of risk factors or to "bounce back" from a problem; the ability to cope successfully in the face of significant adversity or risk.

Respondent

An individual from whom data are collected via questionnaire, interview, or other means.

Risk Factor

Attitude, behavior, belief, situation, or action that may put a group, organization, individual, or community at risk for the development of negative behaviors.

School Survey

A process, most often using a specially designed instrument to collect information relevant to school administration, student attitudes and behavior, and/or student performance.

Selective Prevention Strategies

Designed to target subsets of the total population that are deemed to be at risk for negative behaviors by virtue of their membership in a particular population segment – i.e. children of adult alcoholics, dropouts, or students who are failing academically. Groups may be identified on the basis of biological, psychological, social or environmental risk factors known to be associated with specific unhealthy, or unsafe behaviors.

Setting

The place in which a prevention strategy or program takes place, e.g. home, school, workplace, or public places.

Social Indicator

A measure of a social issue that has been tracked over time (e.g., family and community income, educational attainment, health status). Social indicators are often used to document levels of community and group risk and to serve as correlating or underlying conditions for the existence of social problems, such as substance use/abuse.

Social Marketing

The use of commercial marketing techniques to promote the adoption of a behavior that will improve the health or well-being of the target or priority population or of society as a whole.

Social Norms Marketing

An environmental prevention strategy using research, data and a social marketing approach to replace false perceptions of behavior with accurate and true behavioral norms of a defined population.

Stakeholders

Those individuals, agencies, and/or organizations with a direct interest, involvement, or investment.

Strategy

A course of action, based on theory, that is selected in order to achieve an objective.

Sustainability

The ability to thrive and regenerate over the long term.

Target Population

The group of individuals whom program interventions are designed to reach. Also referred to as the defined population, target group, the population of interest or the priority population/group.

Technical Assistance

A form of support that involves an on-going, systematic and interactive process that builds on a pre-existing body of knowledge in order to assist the receiver in achieving the highest quality use of that knowledge to obtain desired results.

Technical Capacity

Specialized skills or specific expertise required for implementation and sustainability.

Theory

The general or abstract principles that present a concise, systematic view of a subject.

Training

Laying the foundation of knowledge. Usually, training is a planned, prepared and coordinated method of education, used to improve individual and organization performance.

Universal Prevention Strategies

Designed for the entire population with broad messages without regard to individual risk factors or need.

Validity

The extent to which a measure of a particular construct/concept actually measures what it purports to measure.

Variable

A factor or characteristic of an intervention, participant, or content that may influence or be related to the possibility of achieving outcomes.

Vision Statement

A global, long-term view or direction that serves as a focus for a goal; conveys a hope for the future.

Workforce Development

Education, training and technical assistance intended to ensure an adequate and skilled workforce in order to successfully accomplish the work that's required.