Step Seven:  EVALUATE SUCCESS

There was a time when simply conducting prevention programs designed to improve the community seemed to be a sufficient goal. Times have changed. Evaluation of prevention efforts is now considered an integral and necessary component of prevention programming. All funding agencies and organizations require it, which should be reason enough. But program evaluation provides numerous additional benefits.

Evaluation can provide practical information that helps prevention practitioners to better understand what components of a prevention effort may have been contributed to positive outcomes and which ones did not. In that regard, it can provide practitioners with information required to strengthen certain components, modify others, and abandon still others. Importantly, evaluation can help to demonstrate that substance abuse prevention works.

When conducted well, the evaluation process can provide answers to several important questions:

• What specific strategies were conducted in the prevention program?
• How was the prevention program carried out?
• Who participated in the prevention program?
• Was the program implemented as intended?
• Did the program achieve what was expected?
• Did the program achieve any unexpected outcomes?
• Did the program produce the desired long-term effects?