PREVENTING PROBLEMS IN PREVENTION RESEARCH

The design, conduct, and analysis of prevention research efforts prese nt formidable challenges, but as the papers in this volume illustrate, the problems of prevention research are probably not altogether intra ctable; they simply require the best of our thinking and the firmest o f our commitments. The papers included in this issue represent some of the best thinking likely to be available, and, in aggregate, they giv e reason for some optimism about prevention research. Which is fortuna te, because it is by now abundantly clear that treatment of all the as sorted personal and social maladies that afflict us individually and a s a society, is impossibly intrusive and expensive, even if we were ce rtain we knew what to do, and we are not. Treatment research is only a step or two ahead of prevention research in nearly any field.