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Citation
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Welsh WN, Lin HJ, Peters RH, Stahler GJ, Lehman WE, Stein LAR, Monico L, Eggers M, Abdel-Salam S, Pierce JC, Hunt E, Gallagher C, Frisman LK. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2015; 152: 230-238. |
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Abstract
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BACKGROUND: This implementation study examined the impact of an organizational process improvement intervention (OPII) on a continuum of evidence based practices related to assessment and community reentry of drug-involved offenders: Measurement/Instrumentation, Case Plan Integration, Conveyance/Utility, and Service Activation/Delivery.
METHODS: To assess implementation outcomes (staff perceptions of evidence-based assessment practices), a survey was administered to correctional and treatment staff (n=1509) at 21 sites randomly assigned to an Early- or Delayed-Start condition. Hierarchical linear models with repeated measures were used to examine changes in evidence-based assessment practices over time, and organizational characteristics were examined as covariates to control for differences across the 21 research sites.
RESULTS: Results demonstrated significant intervention and sustainability effects for three of the four assessment domains examined, although stronger effects were obtained for intra- than inter-agency outcomes. No significant effects were found for Conveyance/Utility.
CONCLUSIONS: Implementation interventions such as the OPII represent an important tool to enhance the use of evidence-based assessment practices in large and diverse correctional systems. Intra-agency assessment activities that were more directly under the control of correctional agencies were implemented most effectively. Activities in domains that required cross-systems collaboration were not as successfully implemented, although longer follow-up periods might afford detection of stronger effects.
Language: en |