What Kind of Information Needs to Be Collected?

For environmental approaches to substance abuse prevention, community-level information is the most valuable and appropriate type of information to collect. For environmental approaches, it will be especially important to collect information regarding three broad arenas: community risk factors, community protective factors, and community readiness.

Community Risk Factors. Risk factors are characteristics or situations that may increase the likelihood of substance use problems for an individual, group, or a community. Individual-level risk factors refer to characteristics or situations that occur statistically more often among people who develop substance use problems, either as adolescents or adults. Community-level risk factors refer to social indicators that are associated with an increase in substance use problems within the community. Community risk factors include easy availability of substances of abuse, local laws and norms favorable to substance use, high rates of neighborhood transition, low rates of neighborhood attachment, economic and social deprivation, few employment opportunities, and few opportunities for youth community involvement.

Community Protective Factors. Protective factors are characteristics or situations that may decrease the likelihood of substance use problems for an individual, a group, or a community. On an individual level, protective factors refer to characteristics or situations that occur statistically less often among people who develop substance use problems, either as adolescents or adults. On a community level, protective factors refer to social indicators that are associated with a decrease in substance use problems within the community. Examples of community protective factors include laws and norms that restrict access to substances of abuse, laws and norms that support not using substances of abuse, access to housing and social services, access to employment and job training, and youth involvement in community service.

Community Readiness for change. Communities and groups vary widely in their level of community readiness for change, which involves people’s beliefs, attitudes, and intentions regarding the extent to which changes are needed and their perceptions of individual and organizational capacity to successfully make those changes (Armenakis et al. 1993). Readiness is a state of mind about the need for an innovation and the capacity to change. It is the cognitive precursor to behaviors or either resistance or support for the efforts to change. Readiness can be thought of as the first part of the natural cycle of change. Importantly, readiness for change can be assessed or measured and prevention interventions can be designed based on these assessments (Backer 1995).