USING ETHNOGRAPHY IN THE EVALUATION OF DRUG PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION PROGRAMS

As more community-based substance-misuse prevention and intervention p rograms are funded by government and private agencies, innovative eval uation designs are required. Traditional impact or outcome evaluations based on quantitative experimental designs are not enough. Without di scarding the use of statistically analyzed survey instruments, a trian gulate evaluation approach centered on ethnographic fieldwork has prov en successful in fulfilling this need. This paper discusses changing a ttitudes about ethnography in the evaluation field, describes the deve lopment and usefulness of ethnography in evaluation research, and repo rts on the incorporation of ethnography as part of a triangulation eva luation design as used by National Development and Research Institutes , Inc.