Prevention Services & Programs
Acronyms and Terminolgy Glossary
Sources: Southwest Prevention Center, Partners for Substance Abuse Prevention, a SAMHSA/CSAP
Glossary A-I
A
Alternatives
This CSAP strategy provides for the participation of target populations in activities that exclude substance use. The assumption is that constructive and healthy activities offset the attraction to--or otherwise meet the needs ususally filled by--alcohol and drugs and would, therefore, minimize or oliviate resorting to the later.
Anecdotal Evidence
Information derived from a subjective report, observation, or example that may or may not be reliable but cannot be considered scientifically valid or representative of a larger group or of conditions in another location.
ANOVA - Analysis of Variance
A statistical test used to analyze the differences between mean values of a dependent variable.
For a particular indicator or performance goal, the industry (healthcare or non-healthcare) measure of best performance. The benchmarking process identifies the best performance in the industry for a particular process or outcome, determines how that performance is achieved, and applies the lessons learned to improve performance elsewhere.
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B
Benchmark
For a particular indicator or performance goal, the industry (healthcare or non-healthcare) measure of best performance. The benchmarking process identifies the best performance in the industry for a particular process or outcome, determines how that performance is achieved, and applies the lessons learned to improve performance elsewhere.
Binge Alcohol Use
Drinking five or more drinks on the same occasion (i.e. drinks are consumed at the same time or within a couple of hours of each other) on at least 1 day in the past 30 days.
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C
CAAC - Cooperative Agreement Advisory Council
The Governor's Cooperative Agreement Advisory Committee; identified in the awarded PreSIG (State Incentive Planning Grant / SIPG) and formed to develop a comprehensive statewide substance abuse prevention plan for youth substance abuse prevention.
Capacity Building
Increasing the ability and skills of individuals, groups, and organizations to plan, undertake, and manage initiatives. The approach also enhances the capacity of the individuals, groups, and organizations to deal with future issues or problems.
Case Study
A Case study is a useful tool to collect in-depth program information on a single participant or site and is especially useful in providing information in fundraising efforts. A case study can be the story of one person's experience with a program. To protect privacy, it may be important to change the actual participant's name and other identifying characteristics. Gathering information through a case study may lead to other indications about the program experience.
Club Drugs
This term refers to illegal drugs used at so-called rave parties - large, high-energy all night dance parties that feature loud, pulsating techno music and flashing laser lights - for teens and young adults.
Community Development
Community Development is indicated by collaborative, collective action taken by local people to enhance the long-term social, economic, and environmental conditions of their community. The primary goal of community development is to create a better overall quality of life for everyone in the community.
Community Readiness
The degree of support for or resistance to identifying substance use and abuse as significant social problems in a community. Stages of community readiness for prevention provide an appropriate framework for understanding prevention readiness at the community levels.
Community-Based Approach
A prevention approach that focuses on the problems or needs of an entire community, be it a large city, a small town, a school, a worksite, or a public place. Other popular approaches include school-based, family-based, environmental prevention.
Community-Based Process
This CSAP strategy aims to enhance the ability of the community to more effectively provide prevention and treatment services for substance abuse disorders. Activities in this strategy include organizing, planning, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness of services implementation, interagency collaboration building, and networking.
Coalition
Full partnerships or collaborations among organizations that require sharing resources and leadership to accomplish common goals on an ongoing basis. Collaboration techniques are essential to achieve increased capacity because they allow community members to identify problems and increase the likelihood that they will reach consensus on goals and implementation strategies. The paramount issue in a full collaboration is the willingness of organizations (or individuals) to enhance one another's capacity for mutual benefits and a common purpose. Usually this requires substantial time commitments, very high levels of trust, and extensive areas of common turf.
Cost-Effectiveness
Cost effectiveness generally answers the question, does the program offer good value for the amount of money spent? Has account financial management and accountability, reporting, program delivery costs as well as program savings been considered. Have you addressed the question of whether alternative methods of delivering the program are more cost effective?
Culturally Appropriate
Activities and programs that take into account the practices and beliefs of a particular social or cultural group so that the programs and activities are acceptable, accessible, persuasive, and meaningful.
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D
Data Driven
A process whereby decisions are informed by and tested against systematically gathered and analyzed information.
Data - Collection Instruments
The tools used to collect information. Examples of data-collection instruments include surveys, focus groups, questionnaires, and administrative records.
Descriptive Statistics
Statistics that describe characteristics about groups of data; scores. Descriptive statistics include measure of mean, skewness, reliability, validity and standard deviation.
Direct Observations
Direct observation is a less obtrusive method to gather information about things that can be observed. For example, by visiting a participant's home, you can directly collect information on the physical surroundings. By monitoring program activities or meetings, you can observe who shows up for meetings or the program, how many individuals outwardly participate in a meeting or an activity, how people interact, whether participants can apply the skills that are being taught, and so on.
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E
Early Intervention
Identification of persons at high risk prior to their having a serious consequence, or persons at high risk who have had limited serious consequences related to substance use on the job or having a significant personal, economic, legal, or health/mental health consequence, and providing these persons at high risk with appropriate counseling, treatment, education, or other intervention.
Ecological Model (Theory)
Ecological Theory is a view that behavior is affected by and affecting multiple levels of influence. Five levels of influence have been identified for health-related behaviors and conditions: 1) intrapersonal or individual factors; 2) interpersonal factors; 3) institutional or organizational factors; 4) community factors; and 5) public policy factors. This model can be used to understand and develop interventions for changing behavior.
Education
This CSAP strategy involves two-way communication and is distinguished from the information dissemination strategy by the fact that interaction between the educator/facilitator and the participants is the basis of its activities. Activities under this strategy aim to affect critical life and social skills, including decision-making, refusal skills, critical analysis (e.g. of media messages), and systematic judgment abilities.
Effective
The preponderance of research or program findings is consistent, positive, and clearly related to the intervention.
Effective Programs
SAMHSA Effective Programs are well-implemented, well-evaluated programs that produce a consistent positive pattern of results (across domains and/or replications).
Environmental Approaches
Environmental approaches are one of the six strategies mandated by the SAPT Block Grant regulations. This strategy establishes or changes community standards, codes, and attitudes and thus influences the incidence and prevalence of substance abuse. Approaches can center on legal and regulatory issues or can relate to service and action-oriented initiatives. Examples include TA to communities to maximize the enforcement of laws governing the availability and distribution of legal drugs; product pricing strategies; and the modification of advertising of alcohol and tobacco.
Environmental Factors
Environmental factors are external or perceived to be external to an individual but that may nonetheless affect his or her behavior. At a narrow level these factors relate to an individual's family setting and relationships. At the broader level, these refer to social norms and expectations as well as policies and their implementation.
Evaluation
Evaluation is a process that helps prevention practitioners discover the strengths and weaknesses of their activities so that they can make improvements over time. Time spent on evaluations is well spent because it allows groups to use money and other resources more efficiently in the future. Also, evaluation does not have to be expensive or complicated to be useful. Some evaluations can be done at little or no cost, and some can be completed by persons who are not professional evaluators. Local colleges and universities can be sources of professional evaluation support by persons working on degrees in sociology, educational psychology, social work, biostatistics, public health, and other areas.
Evaluation Instruments
Specially designed data collection tools (e.g., questionnaires, survey instruments, structured observation guides) to obtain measurably reliable responses from individuals or groups pertaining to their attitudes, abilities, beliefs, or behaviors (Achieving Outcomes, 12/01).
Experimental Design
A research design involving random selection of study subjects, random assignment of them to control or intervention groups, and measurements of both groups. Measurements are typically conducted before and always after the intervention. The results obtained from such studies typically yield the most definitive and defensible evidence of an intervention's effectiveness.
External Validity
External validity is the extent to which outcomes and findings apply (or can be generalized) to person, objects, settings, or times other than those that were the subject of the study.
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F
Feedback
Verbal or nonverbal communication response that occurs during a message, plan, policy, approach, etc., has been forwarded.
Fidelity
Fidellity is the agreement (concordance) between a replicated program model or strategy with the specification of the original. On a continuum of high to low, where high represents the closest adherence to the developer's design, it is the degree of fit between the developer-defined components of a substance abuse prevention intervention and its actual implementation in a given organizational or community setting. In operational terms, it is the rigor with which an intervention adheres to the developer's model.
Formative
Formal term for Process Evaluation. Evaluation design to document what policies and/or programs actually happened, detailing activities, participants involved, resources, methods of management, and other output indicators.
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G
Gateway Drugs
The term refers to alcohol, tobacco, and/or marijuana as drugs that are precursors to the use of other drugs that are considered more problematic. This term is ususally used in regards to drug use by youth.
Generalizability
The extent to which program findings, principles, and models apply to other populations and/or settings.
Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA)
The purposes of this Act are to improve the confidence of the American people in the capability of the Federal Government by systematically holding Federal agencies accountable for achieving program results; to initiate reform with a series of pilot projects in setting program goals, measuring program performance against those goals, and publicly reporting on their progress; to improve Federal program effectiveness and public accountability by promoting a new focus on results, service quality, and customer satisfaction; to help Federal managers improve service delivery, by requiring that they plan for meeting program objectives and by providing them with information about program results and service quality; to improve congressional decision-making by providing more objective information on achieving statutory objectives and on the relative effectiveness and efficiency of Federal programs and spending; and to improve internal management of the Federal Government. Agencies must set specific GPRA goals each year and report on progress in attaining them.
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H
Heavy Alcohol Use
Drinking five or more drinks on the same occassion on each of 5 or more days in the past 30 days. All heavy alcohol users are also binge alcohol users.
Healthy People 2010
Healthy People 2010 is the prevention agenda for the Nation. It is a statement of national health objectives designed to identify the most significant preventable threats to health and to establish national goals to reduce these threats. This agenda was established with a great deal of input from public and private organizations and will be carefully monitored throughout the present decade. A number of prevention goals have been established with respect to substance abuse.
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I
Indicated Prevention Measure
A prevention measure directed to specific individuals with known, identified risk factors.
Indicator
A substittue measue for a concept that is not directly observable or measureable (e.g. prejudice, substance abuse). For example, an indicator of "substance abues" could be "rate of emergency room admissions for drug overdose." Because of the imperfect fit between indicators and concepts, it is better to rely on several indicators rather than on just one when measuring this type of concept. A variable that relates directly to some part of a program goal or objective. Positive change on an indicator is presumed to indicate progress in accomplishing the larger program objective. For example a program may aim to reduce drinking among teens. An indicator of progress could be a reduction in the number of drunk driving arrests or the number of teens found to be drinking alcohol in clubs.
Impact Evaluation
Impact evaluation is a type of outcome evaluation that focuses on the broad, long-term impacts or results of program activities. For example, an impact evaluation could show that a decrease in a community's crime rate is the direct result of a program designed to provide community policing.
Incidence
The number of new cases of a disease or occurrences of an event in a particular time period, usually expressed as a rate, with the number of cases as the numerator and the population at risk as the denominator. Incidence rates are often presented in standard terms, such as the number of new cases per 100,000 population.
Indicated prevention measure
A preventive measure directed to specific individuals with known, identified risk factors.
Indicator
An indicator is a substitute measure for a concept that is not directly observable or measurable (e.g., prejudice, substance abuse). For example, an indicator of "substance abuse" could be "rate of emergency room admissions for drug overdose." Because of the imperfect fit between indicators and concepts, it is better to rely on several indicators rather than on just one when measuring this type of concept.
A variable that relates directly to some part of a program goal or objective. Positive change on an indicator is presumed to indicate progress in accomplishing the larger program objective. For example, a program may aim to reduce drinking among teens. An indicator of progress could be a reduction in the number of drunk driving arrests or the number of teens found to be drinking alcohol in clubs.
In-Kind Contributions
In-Kind contributions are materials, equipment, services, and even people that are donated to your program efforts. Contributions can be equipment such as computers, software or cooking utensils and office furniture and supplies. It can also be time, such as a computer programmer who donates his or her time. To count as revenue, these donations must be quantifiable.
Internal Evaluation
Evaluation conducted by staff within the same organizational structure as that delivering the program or implementing the policy.
Intermediate Outcomes
In a sequence of changes expected to occur in a science-based program, the changes that are measured at program completion. Depending on the theory of change guiding the intervention, an intermediate outcome in one intervention may be an immediate or a final outcome in another.
Intervention
An intervention is an activity or set of activities to which a group is exposed in order to change the group's behavior. In substance abuse prevention, interventions may be used to prevent or lower the rate of substance abuse or substance abuse-related problems.
IOM - Institute of Medicine
A nonprofit national component organization of the National Academies of Science, specifically created to advice national policy makers, and federal agencies on matters of biomedical science, medicine and health. Its mission is to improve helath by providing unbiased, evidence-based and authoritative information and advice concerning science and health policy.
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