Needs Assessment Training

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Needs Assessment Training
August 14, 2014
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Strategic Prevention Framework
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Steps of the Needs Assessment
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Two Common Kinds of Needs Assessments

• What are my communitys top issues?
• Why is this specific issue such a problem in my
  community?

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The What Assessment

• Focus on
• Extent of use
• Extent of related problems (consequences)
• Goal identify the most problematic but
  changeable areas to focus on

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The Why Assessment

• Go in-depth on an identified problem
• Can be focused by a logic model
• Focus on
• In general, why is this a problem?
• Specifically, why is this a problem here?
  (contributing local factors root causes)
• Goal Identify the most substantial, changeable
  links in the chain to use/consequences

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Public Health Model
Host
Environment
Agent
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Public Health Approach to preventing and reducing
substance-related problems

• Population level change focuses on change for the
  entire population. By this we mean a collection
  of individuals who have one or more personal or
  environment characteristics in common.
• Influencing whole communities not just 20, 50
  or 200 individuals.

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Public Health Approach to preventing and reducing
substance-related problems

• Outcome based prevention focuses on reducing
  negative consequences to substance abuse by using
  data to identify consequences, consumption
  patterns and casual factors
• Communities know what their problem are
• Which factor cause the problems
• Which strategies are effective in reducing the
  risk factor and underlying conditions

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Public Health Approach to preventing and reducing
substance-related problems

• A logical approach, grounded in data collection
  and clear linkages between consequences,
  consumption, risk factors and underlying
  conditions and strategies

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Substance-Related Consequences and Consumption
Risk and Protective Factors/Causal Factors
Strategies (Policies, Practices, Programs)

• Overall consumption
• Heavy consumption
• Consumption in risky
• situations
• Consumption by high
• risk groups

• MUST
• Address the targeted consequence
• Address risk and
• protective factors
• /causal factors involved
• Be evidenced-based

• Availability of substances
• Promotion of substances
• Social norms
• Enforcement of policies
• Perception of risk
• Positive attitude toward use

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Assessing your needs

• If you start your needs assessment knowing which
  programs, polices or practice you want to
  implement, then your not are really assessing
  your needsyou are justifying your choice of
  strategies

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BASIC Steps

• Planning the needs assessment
• Collecting data
• Prioritizing the data

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Planning NA

• You need a clear plan for collecting the
  information critical to your assessment in as
  efficient a manner as possible.
• STAY FOCUSED

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Sub Committee

• To oversee and conduct the NA
• Ensure geographic coverage
• Members who speak to substance abuse issues
  across the full life span of the community
• Members with an array of experience so everything
  is culturally competent

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Building Your County Team

• Building a county data assessment team will be a
  great asset
• Knowing who to bring on board as a member is very
  important
• Relationships formed as a result of this process
  may help build strategic alliances that may be
  beneficial in future endeavors

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Your County TeamWho might be a fit for your team?

• Someone who can commit their time
• Someone who knows data or has access to data
• Someone willing to provide input and give
  feedback
• Someone known by others as a champion of causes
  to help others
• Someone whose clout will help add legitimacy to
  your process

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Your County TeamCounty Team Building Activity

• Pair together in groups of two to three people.
• Brainstorm to come up with a list of people who
  you feel would ideally be members of your county
  team and state reasons why.
• Be prepared to share your list with the group!

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How to start

• Gather and review previous assessments conducted
  in our county
• Ask the following questions
• Who is involved (age, gender, income,
  race/ethnicity)
• Where does the problem occur (area/town/location)
• When does the problem occur
  (time of day/season
• Why is the problem occurring

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Methods for collecting data

• Focus Groups
• Key Information Interviews
• Interviews with community experts
• Environmental Scans
• Community Surveys
• Archival Data
• Resource/Policy Assessment

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Common Types of Data
Pros/Cons?
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Pros and Cons
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Focus Groups

• Focus groups are beneficial because they allow
  participants to gather in a single location at a
  given time to share perceptions and information
• To maximize the benefits of focus groups, the
  moderator should have some specific knowledge of
  the process rather than conducting a focus group
  blindly

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Focus Groups

• Qualitative Data from your community about issues
  and attitudes
• Participants share ideas and observations that
  can clarify issues for you or present new
  perspectives
• Can be different age groups or community sectors

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Key Informant Interviews

• Key informant interviews allow flexibility as
  they do not require a group of people to come
  together for participation
• Will require some effort to seek appropriate
  interviewees and receive response in a timely
  manner

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Key Informant Interviews

• Perspectives from people who observe ad monitor
  community functioning
• Youth, educators, school resource officers,
  community leaders, neighborhood residents,
  elders, law enforcement, solicitors, local
  government, judicial officers, etc.

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Key Informant Interviews

• You can ask the interviewee specific question
  that may address a particular gap
• Open-ended question provide general themes for
  discussion
• But allow community experts to introduce their
  own ideas and issues

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Key Informant Interviews Consider the following
for interviews

• ATOD Treatment
• ATOD Prevention
• Law enforcement
• Youth
• Social service agency
• Local government
• Community groups
• Health care providers

• Education (k-12)
• Education (higher ed.)
• Faith Community
• Media
• Health department
• Local coalitions
• Mental health agency

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KII Guides

• KII packet includes these guides/items
• Instruction/greeting sheet
• Adult KII Guide
• Youth KII Guide
• Law Enforcement KII Guide
• K-12 Education KII Guide
• Higher Education KII Guide

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KII Guides

• KIIs are geared toward gathering thoughts,
  experiences and ideas about ATOD consumption.
• KIIs will provide useful, additional consumption
  related information for county profiles
• Answers to questions should prove to be
  especially helpful in counties with no local
  survey participation
• A guide sheet will be produced to show which
  questions on each KII guide are alcohol, tobacco,
  or other drug related.

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KII Guides

• Interviews may last an estimated 20-45 minutes
  depending upon interviewee and ability of
  interviewer to maintain the focus of the
  interview
• Ideally counties will interview several diverse
  persons for each KII guide
• Conducting KIIs should be a team effort

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Surveys

• Collection of questions that are asked of many
  people in the same manner
• Each with a fixed set of possible responses from
  which to choose
• Can be administered y mail, fact-to-face over the
  telephone or via the web

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Survey Advantages
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Survey Disadvantages
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Survey Data

• Local School Survey
• Communites That Care School Survey
• Parent Survey
• Community Survey

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Archival Data

• Can be a wide range of things
• AET Data
• Crash Data
• Outlet Data
• Treatment Data
• Good interpretation is important
• Consider graphing/plotting

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Interpreting Archival Data

• What could these crash data tell you?
• Avg. total crashes per month
• of annual crashes that are alcohol-related
• Keep going!

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Using Rates

• Can make numbers easier to grasp more accurate
  to compare
• Percentages
• Events per of people or attempts
• Think through the denominator
• Crash example crashes per total population?

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Survey Archival Data

• How far back do you dig?
• Most recent always most valuable
• Trend data can be very useful, too
• AET Compliance Rate
• 12.5 in FY 11
• Has dropped each year used to be gt20

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Qualitative Data

• Town Hall Meetings
• Focus Groups
• Key Informant Interviews
• One on Ones

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Qualitative Data

• What to do with it?
• Good write-up is key
• Analysis techniques vary from high-tech to
  low-tech

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Non-traditional Assessment Methods

• Brief homeroom surveys
• Undercover observations of retailers
• Place of last drink/Alcohol source
• Party hunting
• Media scans
• Environmental scans
• Policy assessments
• Resource assessments

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Environmental Scans

• The goal of scans is simply to get a sense of
  what messages (blatant or subtle) your community
  is putting out regarding alcohol and tobacco use.
• Scans should include alcohol and tobacco
  surveillance/observation for stores as well as
  billboards and other forms of advertisement in
  the community
• Environmental Scan forms provided

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Pulling it All Together

• Mix of art and science
• Begin w/ key questions you were looking to answer
• For each data source, determine the most
  important findings for each key question
• By key question, compare those findings across
  data sources
• Look for common themes

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Prioritizing

• Prevalence of the contributing local factor
• Relationship between the contributing local
  factor and priority issue
• Capacity to change the contributing local
  factored
• Political Will to change the contributing local
  factor

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Cultural Competency

• Be inclusive of state and community level key
  leaders
• Various sectors of county
• Law enforcement ,school, youth etc.
• Various sib populations (age, race, sex, etc
• Geographic locations
• Be conscious of communication styles, etc.

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SEOW Theory

• The SPF requires States and communities to
  systematically
• Assess their prevention needs based on
  epidemiological data,
• Build their prevention capacity,
• Develop a strategic plan,
• Implement effective community prevention
  programs, policies and practices, and
• Evaluate their efforts for outcomes.

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State Epidemiological Profile
The Results section, which is the largest
section

• Provides written descriptions, tables, and charts
• Shows consumption and consequence trend and
  prevalence data for alcohol, tobacco, and
  marijuana and other illicit drugs
• Gives a summary for each indicated drug category
• A partial list of indicators include
  availability/consumption, current use, binge use,
  mortality, daily use, sexual activity and
  dependence or abuse

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State Epidemiological Profile
The Conclusion section

• Offers an overall summary of findings
• Discusses data limitations

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State Epidemiological Profile
The Appendix section outlines

• Constructs and indicators used
• Data sources used
• Indicates geographic levels of constructs and
  indicators data sources (i.e. national, state)
  and SAMHSA NOM Domain (i.e. reduced morbidity,
  crime and criminal justice)

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County Epidemiological Profiles

• As with the state profile, the Executive Summary
  is a brief description of data driven and
  supported consumption and consequences findings
  for selected indicators of 1) alcohol, 2)
  tobacco, and 3) marijuana and other illicit
  drugs.
• Feel free to add to the template version of the
  opening paragraph in order to personalize the
  executive summary to your specific county and
  efforts

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County Epidemiological Profiles

• Unlike the state profile, in the county profile,
  the Executive Summary concludes with a County
  Priorities section
• This is an opportunity to briefly highlight or
  identify the problems/issues your county has
  identified as priorities

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County Epidemiological Profiles

• Conclude the Introduction section with
• discussion of
• data challenges in your county
• how closely your county was or was not able to
  adhere to the criteria for causal, consequence,
  and consumption constructs and indicators listed
  on page 2 and 3 of the Introduction section,
  which include 1) availability, 2) validity, 3)
  periodic collection, 4) consistency, and 5)
  sensitivity

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County Epidemiological Profiles

• The Methods section should describe
• How priorities were determined
• How data is presented in the profile (i.e.
  charts, tables, or graphs with state or school
  district comparisons)
• Confidence intervals
• Survey results weaknesses if applicable
• Unstable data due to small number of events if
  applicable

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County Epidemiological Profiles

• The Results section begins with a County Overview
• The County Overview is a generalized description
  of the county
• It will probably be ½ to one page long
• How you would describe your county to outsiders

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County Epidemiological Profiles

• In the Results section a summary is written for
  data findings in each of the three drug
  categories
• Try to include compelling/key data in the summary
• Add sub-region data where available (i.e. crime
  data mapped to show areas of concern)

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Written PlanOverall Composition

• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Conclusion
• Appendix

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Closing the Loop
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Assessment Evaluation

• Assessment can be foundation for evaluation plan
• Focus on why efforts began
• Did problem behavior/consequences change?
• Did contributing local factors change?
• Scope may not match
• Pieces of evaluation can initiate a new
  assessment or a revision of current plans

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Cultural Competence

• Have diversity on your assessment analysis team
• Identify populations that wont get covered from
  traditional data collection
• Review collection methods/tools for
  appropriateness to key populations

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How Often Do You Reassess?

• Regular updates of easy data can be helpful
• Consider which data sources can be viewed as
  often as monthly to gauge immediate impact
• Full assessments every 3-5 years