3 Ways to Improve Your Prevention Program Evaluation

3 Ways to Improve Your Prevention Program Evaluation

Every organization needs to know how well their prevention program works and every prevention professional wants to determine what type of positive impact they are having on their participants.  

That's why at Prevention Plus Wellness (PPW) we developed free evaluation tools including pre and posttest surveys.  Simply have your participants complete the surveys immediately before and after the PPW program lesson.

We also provide PPW program providers with an Instructor's Survey to assess program implementation quality 

Instructors complete their survey immediately after providing each PPW program lesson to assess and monitor program implementation excellence.

These data collection instruments are included with PPW programs and are also available in easy to implement online versions.

Just request your free customized links (or QR codes) for your pretest and posttest surveys and Instructor’s Survey from us at: info@preventionpluswellness.com

In addition, we will provide you and your organization with online SurveyMonkey charts and raw data highlighting your participating youth group's pre and post-program and Instructor’s Survey results.  

3 Ways to Enhance Your Prevention Program Evaluation

Below are three ways to enhance your program evaluation to get the best data for promoting and improving your program.

#1: Request Links to Online Surveys

While PPW programs come with paper surveys, we highly recommend requesting customized links or QR codes to our online pre-posttest surveys and the Instructor’s Survey to make data collection and analysis easier and less time consuming.

Just show your pretest and posttest links/QR codes to participants immediately before and after the PPW lesson and your data is collected for you! 

Then, have instructors use the Instructor’s Survey link to complete a post-program assessment of the quality of their program implementation.

Monitor these data over time to ensure high quality program implementation and outcomes.

#2: Add a Comparison Group

A second way to significantly improve your prevention program evaluation is to collect pre-posttest survey data from a comparison group.

A comparison group can be any population of youth demographically similar to those you are providing your PPW program. 

For example, if you are implementing a PPW program to students in high school health education, select some classes to receive the PPW program and others to be the comparison classes.

Comparison students will receive their regular health education class but will be provided with the PPW pretest and posttest surveys before and after their lesson.

Having pretest and posttest survey data from youth who received the PPW program, and a comparison group who did not, will greatly increase the ability to assess your PPW program’s effectiveness.   

#3: Collect Follow-Up Health Behavior Surveys

A third way to enhance your prevention program evaluation is to use the Health Behavior Survey. 

The Health Behavior Survey not only assesses risk and protective factors for substance use and healthy behaviors, like the immediate pretest and posttest surveys, but it also measures actual health habits.

Because the Health Behavior Survey assesses 30-day substance use and health behaviors, it needs to be implemented before providing the PPW program lesson and at least one-month afterward.

The additional data provided by the Health Behavior Survey greatly increases the quality (and quantity) of data collected and allows providers to determine the extent to which their PPW program is preventing and reducing substance use while increasing protective healthy behaviors among their target population.   

Conclusion

Prevention Plus Wellness provides free paper and online pretest and posttest surveys and an Instructor’s Survey to evaluate and monitor program efficacy and quality.

We suggest three ways to enhance your program’s evaluation, including: 1) Requesting links to use online surveys, 2) Adding a comparison group to your evaluation, and 3) Using the Health Behavior Survey to collect follow-up data on actual health habits of participants.

For more information on PPW program evaluation support: https://preventionpluswellness.com/pages/program-evaluation-support-tools

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