Relationships Between Coalition Characteristics and Community Change

Background/Purpose: Communities that Care (CTC) is a community planning strategy used to prevent mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders in youth. As a social work practice strategy, this approach has been used as a scientific, effective, and efficient approach to social change throughout the history of our profession (Weil, 2005). Committed to both evidence-based practice and the self determination of communities, CTC uses a coalition-based approach to develop community capacity to make use of technical knowledge in ways that incorporate the community's local norms and values. The community-randomized trial of CTC provides an opportunity to study coalition processes and the mechanisms of social change. In CTC communities, coalitions of community residents and service providers are trained in the latest advances in prevention science. They are then guided through the process of assessing community prevention resources and youth wellbeing, using data to prioritize target populations and problems, selecting intervention strategies from a list of approaches that have been tested and shown to be effective, creating an action plan, monitoring implementation, and measuring outcomes. This presentation will (a) explore the variation across CTC communities in their coalition structures and functioning across time and (b) explore the relationship of coalition characteristics to CTC implementation and outcomes. Methods/Results: Ten to twenty members of each CTC coalition were surveyed annually throughout a five year intervention period to determine what aspects of coalition functioning led to social change. Aspects of coalition functioning that were studied include: goal directedness, efficiency, effective management, participation opportunities, community relations, stability, effective communication, cohesion, and conflict. For example, coalition efficiency (6 items; internal reliability ranges from .80-.86 across time), measures the extent to which members report that “This is a highly efficient, work-oriented board.” The intra-class correlations of board efficiency across communities, ranging from .086 to .11, reveal meaningful differences between CTC coalitions in their efficiency-orientation. On the other hand, participation opportunities (2 items; internal reliability ranges from .65-.77 across time), measuring the extent to which members report that “The CTC leadership intentionally seeks out your views” does not vary significantly across CTC coalitions. Conclusions/Implications: It is important to study the relationships between dimensions of coalition functioning and outcomes. This study examines the relationships between various dimensions of coalition functioning and coalition member self-reports of goal attainment, community positional leaders' (ie., mayor, chief of police) assessment of goal attainment and community change, and community youths' self-reports of behavior and wellbeing outcomes. Understanding the extent to which variability in dimensions of coalition functioning, including coalition efficiency and participation opportunities, predict social change will contribute to the creation of an evidence-base for macro social work practice.