Summing up. Recommendations and experiences for evaluation of community-level prevention programs

This article provides recommendations and observations about evaluation of a locally based prevention project to reduce problems at a total community or aggregate level. The shift from targeting specific individuals or subpopulations to the overall structure and environment of a community is most demanding. Evaluation tools and analysis techniques have lagged behind program development because community-level interventions are not linked to a specific target group who can be separately studied. Thus assumptions about using random assignment and/or comparison communities as means to control for confounding variables are weakened when the unit of analysis is the community itself and dependent measures are subject to trending and the effects of history.     

Validating quality indicators. Quality as relationship between structure, process, and outcome

Theory and research have not kept pace with the growing interest in evaluating quality of mental health care, resulting in the use of unvalidated quality indicators. A framework for validating quality indicators is offered by which quality is viewed as the relationship between service structures, processes, and outcomes. Adoption of this framework will facilitate the measurement of quality using valid indicators and should be useful to agencies in their continuous quality improvement efforts. Valid information about the quality of mental health care services will help purchasers and consumers make more informed health care decisions.     

Long-term impact of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.). Results of a 6-year follow-up

The long-term effectiveness of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) was assessed by contrasting drug use and other D.A.R.E.-related attitudinal latent variables among 356 twelfth-grade students who had received the program in the 6th grade with 264 others who did not receive it. A prior study of these subjects when they were in 9th grade had shown no significant differences. A follow-up survey in 12th grade assessed central D.A.R.E. concepts such as self-esteem, police bonds, delay of experimentation with drugs, and various forms of drug use. Although the authors found no relationship between prior D.A.R.E. participation and later alcohol use, cigarette smoking, or marijuana use in 12th grade, there was a significant relationship between earlier D.A.R.E. participation and less use of illegal, more deviant drugs (e.g., inhalants, cocaine, LSD) in a development sample but not in a validation sample. Findings from the two studies suggest a possible sleeper effect for D.A.R.E. in reference to the use of harder drugs, especially among teenage males.     

Scenarios,uncertainty and conditional forecasts of the world population

This study is concerned with the methods available for the forecasting of future trends in the world's population. Particular attention is given to the problem of the uncertainties that these forecasts include. "The purpose of this paper is to show how subjective and data-based probabilistic assessments of error can be combined, to give a user a realistic assessment of the uncertainty of demographic forecasts, and to apply these concepts to forecasts of the world population. Moreover, we shall show how conditional forecasts can provide a simple conceptual framework in which to view scenarios. They can be particularly useful in the evaluation of proposed policies. Indeed, the so-called environmental impact assessments...that are now mandatory in many countries for major construction projects typically contain elements of conditional forecasting." The concepts discussed are illustrated by comparing a scenario of future global population growth prepared at the Institute of Applied Systems Analysis with a UN population projection.     

The role of demographic and economic characteristics of twelve member states of the European Union in the diversity of state support for families

"This study is based upon an international dataset comparing state support for families in fifteen countries (of which twelve are member states of the European Union).... Using multiple regression analysis, the levels of state support are explained by the principal parameters used for setting the levels of benefit, and by the demographic and economic characteristics of the countries concerned....[Results suggest] that the economic convergence of the member states is likely to promote greater similarity in their systems of state welfare support for families." (EXCERPT)     

Will a large-scale migration of Russians to the Russian Republic take place over the current decade?

The author discusses "the likely scale of in-migration from the other former union republics into the Russian Republic over the remainder of this decade....I believe that during the 1990s there will be continued mass in-migration into Russia from the seven former union republics of Central Asia and the Transcaucasus....I also foresee that Russians will continue to leave such inhospitable milieux as southern Kazakhstan and western Ukraine."     

Ireland: an "emigrant nursery" in the world economy

"This paper focuses on historical and contemporary aspects of Irish emigration and argues that a world-systems, comparative approach avoids the pitfalls of behaviouralism and national exceptionalism in conventional accounts of Irish emigration. It suggests that causes and consequences vary with social class, ethnic group and regional context, compares 'traditional' with 'new wave' emigration and argues that it is premature to talk of the 'Europeanisation' of Irish emigration." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)