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Where’s the Data? |
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Remember the old adage, don’t reinvent the wheel? This advice can be particularly helpful to schools, organizations, and agencies looking for ways to make positive community wide impacts, while also working with limited time or resources. Implementing evidence-based programs (EBPs) can increase the likelihood of success by promoting stakeholder buy-in and giving schools, organizations, and agencies access to a range of implementation supports. Evidence-based programs offer proven ways to address a range of topic areas, including mental health, school climate, bullying, and alcohol/substance use. In most cases, an intervention is considered an EBP if there was evidence from at least one rigorous study showing positive impact on outcomes. There are several steps to consider as you implement an EBP:
- Choose a program that is right for your school, organization, or agency by using data to determine your local needs and strengths.
- Assess your school, organization, or agency’s readiness to implement.
- Review program registries and talk to schools and organizations implementing the same EBP to hear about their implementation successes and challenges.
- Engage key stakeholders, including family members, in the planning and implementation process, defining everyone roles and responsibilities, to promote the adoption and sustainability of the EBP.
Using Data to Determine Your Local Needs and Strengths
Evidence-based programs offer proven ways to address a range of topic areas, including mental health, youth violence, school climate, bullying, and alcohol/substance use. To determine which topics the EBP should address, you should access local data to understand your needs and strengths. For example, if your school district has high rates of violence, you might look at data that shows if violence occurs at the same levels in the middle school and high school or if it is more of a problem in one age group. In order to ensure the EBP matches the community and population you serve, you might also want to look at related risk factors, such as violence in the home or community, or existing protective factors, such as the presence of a trusting adult in the home or school, for the community of focus. This data can help determine what outcomes the selected EBP should be designed to address.
Many times, data already exist, whether through recent surveys; focus groups; school, court, or police records; or classroom observations. See the call-out box for more examples of where to find local and national data.
If data collection is necessary, this process could take six months to a year, depending on data needs. This may sound like a long time, but gathering useful data will help you understand trends over time and make an informed decision about which EBP is right for your school, organization, or agency. Some partners, particularly community-based organizations, may have concerns about sharing data. It’s important to communicate that the purpose of data collection is to understand current needs and strengths, and not to assess the effectiveness of existing programs.
Getting Ready for an Evidence-Based Program
Choosing an EBP that is right for your school, organization, or agency is essential to implementation success. Taking into account the skills and capacities needed to implement the program can help you find an intervention that best matches your school’s or organization’s readiness. You’ll also want to consider the capacity of the broader community or local partners that will assist in implementation. In addition to your organization’s readiness, you’ll want to consider whether the EBPs have been used and studied within the specific population group served by your program.
Choosing an Evidence-Based Program
After determining your school or organization is ready for an EBP, the next step is to begin the identification process. Registries provide information about a program’s evidence base, features, training requirements, and cost. Research literature and other published studies can describe the specifics of how the EBP was implemented and outcomes associated with it. In addition, other schools and communities already implementing an EBP can be a great resource in describing their implementation experiences.
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Evidence-Based Registries |
In determining if an EBP fits with your organization, it’s important to consider how the intervention impacts the specific risk and protective factors of the population you serve. It’s also important to consider how the intervention aligns with your mission and vision; whether the program components and logic model are clearly articulated; and whether it fits with your organization’s administrative, technical, and financial capabilities.
Implementing Evidence-Based Programs
When implementing EBPs, it’s important to determine which stakeholders should be involved and how they interact with one another. Remember, implementation occurs within a system, which may present challenges but also affords opportunities. Articulate the role and responsibilities of each stakeholder involved. Many times that includes parents and people at the district, local, state, and federal levels. Review the program’s logic model ahead of time to understand how the program is supposed to lead to change and use it to inform your implementation plan and what specific program activities will be implemented, at what time, and by whom.
From day one, consider the sustainability of the program. Even if soliciting input from stakeholders and gaining buy-in from staff and administrators requires postponing implementation, doing so can help solidify program champions at all levels.
| Alton School District Experience |
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The Alton School District began online training around substance abuse prevention for students which resulted in a low-cost program that required minimal staff time. Project Alert and Lifeskills were selected after review of youth survey data to implement the program. The school district collaborated with local law enforcement, who involved the middle school Resource Officer to partner with health teachers. Due to the active involvement of administrators, the district was able to monitor program fidelity and gather information about program outcomes. The district also implemented Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS), a social emotional learning (SEL) curriculum. This was implemented by elementary teachers who were trained by their colleagues through a train-the-trainer model. Although this program was evidence-based, without enough buy-in among administrators and the presence of champions, the program was implemented inconsistently across the district. Conflicting messages from district leadership around prioritizing academic test scores over SEL instruction resulted in some schools sacrificing SEL instruction time for academics. Buy-in from all stakeholders required an understanding of the link between SEL and academic learning, and communication of this message, with clear expectations to school staff regarding SEL program implementation. |
Choosing, planning for, and implementing EBPs requires time and effort from an engaged group of stakeholders over a sustained period. The rewards are well worth it, however, because this process can lead to selecting the right programs for your school or community and implementing them the way they were designed to be implemented, increasing your chances of positive outcomes.
For more information, see
- Selecting Evidence-Based Resources and
- Evidence-Based Learning Module Series from the National Resource Center.
