2008 · Study · English
The Longitudinal Effect of Technical Assistance Dosage on the Functioning of Communities That Care Prevention Boards in Pennsylvania
Feinberg, M. E., Ridenour, T. A., & Greenberg, M. T.
Feinberg, M. E., Ridenour, T. A., & Greenberg, M. T. (2008). The Longitudinal Effect of Technical Assistance Dosage on the Functioning of Communities That Care Prevention Boards in Pennsylvania. The Journal of Primary Prevention, 29(2), 145–165. doi.org/10.1007/s10935-008-0130-3
Summary
Quantitative study of how much technical assistance (TA) matters for Communities That Care boards, using three years of data from board members and TA providers across the Pennsylvania CTC sites. The authors distinguish on-site from off-site TA and model its dosage against board functioning in the following year. Overall, path models showed little effect of TA dosage on subsequent functioning. On-site TA did appear to help younger boards and boards that were already functioning relatively well, suggesting that support is absorbed best where basic capacity exists. Board functioning and off-site TA were moderately to strongly stable over time, on-site TA dosage was not, and poorly functioning sites did not receive more TA the next year. The paper is among the first to quantify TA effects on prevention coalitions and cautions European CTC programmes against assuming that more coaching automatically produces better boards; targeting and timing appear to matter more than volume.