SUMMING-UP - RECOMMENDATIONS AND EXPERIENCES FOR EVALUATION OF COMMUNITY-LEVEL PREVENTION PROGRAMS

This article provides recommendations and observations about evaluatio n of a locally based prevention project to reduce problems at a total community or aggregate level, The shift from targeting specific indivi duals or subpopulations to the overall structure and environment of a community is most demanding. Evaluation tools and analysis techniques have lagged behind program development because community-level interve ntions am not linked to a specific target group who can be separately studied. Thus assumptions about using random assignment and/or compari son communities as means to control for confounding variables are weak ened when the unit of analysis is the community itself and dependent m easures are subject to trending and the effects of history.