Why Collect Information and Conduct Assessments?

People interested in environmental approaches to substance abuse prevention typically want to improve their community. That’s all well and good, but how do you know your community needs improving? How do you know that the problem you want to address is really a problem? How can you tell that it is a serious problem? How do you know that it affects others? How do you know that no one else is addressing this problem? How will you know if you have improved your community? How do you define success and effectiveness?

Having answers to these questions is critical. Indeed, answering these questions in systematic ways is often mandatory for State or Federal Government agency, foundation, or other groups from whom you may seek funds.

The way to answer these and other questions is to collect information, conduct assessments, and analyze the information. Since this tutorial focuses on environmental approaches to substance abuse prevention, our focus is on community-based prevention (and not family-based, school-based, or individual-based prevention efforts). With this in mind, the overall process of collecting and analyzing information for environmental approaches can be described as community needs assessments.

This data collection and analysis is simply a way to collect information about your community. It will help you to make informed decisions about the specific substance use problem you want to address, the best way to address this problem, the community resources you can draw from to address the problem, and the best way to determine if your efforts were effective.