Step 7 - Wrap-up and conclusion
CONGRATULATIONS! You have achieved something exceptional: you have carried out a complete and coherent planning exercise. It will most likely make your intervention more effective (Springer et al 2004), but not necessarily more popular.
At this point you have finished the programme planning and the evaluation planning. You’ll have realised that programming and evaluating are going very much hand in hand, so much so that they are sometimes indistinguishable.
Dissemination and/or funding
By addressing all the main points of each step of this module in one short document, you will have a ready-made funding application, or at least a checklist for it. Traditionally, a funding application contains all the parts of this PERK module and shows a logical nexus between them.
The EMCDDA guidelines for the evaluation of prevention give some guidance on this point. ‘Evaluations can be conducted for many different reasons, but one of them should always be to provide a basis for future decision-making. There are certain steps to consider which will ensure maximum use of your evaluation. You therefore have to answer the following questions if you don't want all your efforts to be in vain.
- Who should “be in the know”?
- When do they need the information?
- What information will different people be interested in?
- Which written communication forms will you use?
- Which oral communication forms will you use?’
You should even consider using popular media in order to disseminate at local level the most presentable, ‘sexiest’ results of your intervention in simple language. Don’t concentrate only on the scientific–academic aspects of your achievements! Think also about newsletters, mailing lists and websites.
Quality in prevention
It is likely that, while looking back at the steps you have taken, and the documents and EDDRA files you have gone through, you will have had some thoughts on what is prevention quality. In other words, you may have made up some ‘prevention principles’ for yourself. This concluding step of PERK is an invitation to discuss what could be elements of common European prevention principles, analogous to NIDA’s ‘Red Book’ and to its prevention principles: something that could be used in Europe as a commonly agreed prevention quality standard. Your input and suggestions are most welcomed here.
For our own working criteria, we are going to classify EDDRA entries according to programme quality criteria:
- Level I projects – all EDDRA database entries. In order for a project to be added to the EDDRA database, it must have clear indicators in place, which relate to the objectives, initial situation and the theory base. The project must be at least one year old.
- Level II projects – entries to be highlighted. These EDDRA entries must have (a) an outcome evaluation, (b) clear project results, (c) a theory base that is clearly related to the objectives, the initial situation and the indicators and (d) a meaningful overall description (i.e. useful and informative for colleagues)
Note: The terms level I and level II do not necessarily mean that the project had an effective or positive outcome.
In the USA, CSAP has established far-reaching quality criteria. For Europe, given our incipient level of evaluation, more feasible criteria should be found.
For this discussion too, your input is welcomed.
Quality criteria for people carrying out prevention
Slowly but increasingly, discussions are taking place in the EU on establishing quality criteria for people who want to work in prevention (Austria) or for prevention work itself (Greece). The training and content aspects of PERK can give input to the development of such criteria. For instance, projects for which funding is sought could be required to go through minimum planning and theory-reading phases like the one you have just gone through.