Methodological challenges in evaluating community partnerships & coalitions: Still crazy after all these years

The federal Center for Substance Abuse Prevention has made a huge investmen t in community-based substance abuse prevention. Over the past decade it ha s provided funding-for nearly four hundred community partnerships and coali tions. This article describes a series of methodological challenges in eval uating such programs and in assessing their Key processes and outcomes. Eva luation designs face the challenge of an ever-changing array of interventio ns and the unavailability of traditional no-treatment control groups for te sting the effectiveness of these community-wide interventions. Assessment a pproaches must contend with the often poor or at least under-specified, con nections between the immediate outcomes of the community interventions and the ultimately desired impact of reduced substance abuse. Reporting strateg ies must forego researchers' penchants for over-analyzing data in favor of getting the information into the hands of practitioners who can use it. A c ommon theme in the resolution of these issues is the need for evaluation pr ofessionals to move away from the traditional objective detachment often as cribed to the evaluation enterprise. In the spirit of this prevention appro ach itself evaluators must become partners to prevention professionals, ada pting their designs, assessment techniques, and reporting strategies to fit the local context and needs. (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.