Factors related to sustainability include grassroots support, collaboration between researchers and teachers, and teacher participation.

Programs are likely to be sustained if they are high-quality, have evaluated and documented success, have strong administrative support, have community ownership, and meet funder's priorities. Groups planning for sustainability should develop a three-year plan, include an advisory board in planning, identify and maintain a list of current and potential funders, consider non-traditional funding sources (i.e., managed care), develop and follow a timeline and management structure, gain the support of potential funders, carefully maintain program records, perform cost-effectiveness/cost-benefit analyses, consider integration with other service providers, look beyond grants, and follow sound business practices.

Six phases in the community research cycle include research; transfer to a community base; transition, adaptation, replication, or innovation; regeneration based on community feedback to researchers; empowerment; and community ownership of the program.

Factors related to sustainability include user-friendly communication, user-friendly evaluation, adequate capacity-building, adequate resources, yield (benefits), and community (participant) involvement.

Conditions hypothesized to have a positive effect on the institutionalization of educational innovation in the classroom include the following:

• Disincentives external to the school are at least balanced by incentives.
• Relationships among user teachers are good, with high morale, good communication patterns, and a sense of ownership of the innovation.
• The innovation is ambitious and demanding.
• The innovation appeals to the professional identities of the users and facilitators, and respects their professional capabilities.
• The innovation is first introduced on a pilot or trial basis.
• The innovation both allows for and results in mutual adaptation between the innovation and the adopting organization.
• There is a person, or group of people, who serves as an active innovator from within the school system.
• The principal provides consistent institutional support for the innovation.
• The district supports the innovation at the top level, and plans continuation strategies.

Factors related to sustainability include monitoring; quality of process and outcome evaluations; involvement of program staff in the evaluation; resources and support (e.g., paid staff, community organizer, trained and experienced staff who are accepted in community); diversity of funding; use of local funding; effective leadership; technical assistance; and ongoing planning.

Factors related to long-term implementation of social and emotional learning programs include presence of a designated program coordinator, social development facilitator, or social and emotional development committee; high visibility and recognition; active involvement and commitment of larger community; and adaptability.

Recommendations for bringing innovations to scale include the following: Develop strong professional and social normative structures for good teaching practice that are external to individual teachers and their immediate working environments; evaluate how many teachers use good practice; develop organizational structures that intensify and focus expected student outcomes; create intentional processes for reproduction of successes; and create structures that promote learning of new practices and incentive systems that support them.

Factors related to program institutionalization include an ongoing process of formal and informal training; high visibility in the school; adherence to a regular time schedule; inclusion of special education students as regular program recipients; involvement of recognized community figures to help meet program goals; and support of individuals who carry out the initiative with high shared morale, good communication, and a sense of ownership.

Factors affecting the sustainability of core teaching strategies include teacher understanding, teachers' willingness to consider new content and pedagogical approaches, teacher efficacy, and membership in a professional community.

A continuing board provides the best measure for sustainability. Factors statistically associated with the continuing nature of coalition board activity are key leader knowledge of how to select empirically based prevention programs, the coalition's internal functioning, fidelity of implementation, and technical assistance ratings.

Factors related to sustainability include awareness of a problem, concern for the problem, organizational receptivity to change, availability of solutions, adequacy of resources and benefits, convergence of aspirations held by various program constituents, presence of an effective program champion, adjustments between the program and the host organization, and organizational fit.

Factors related to sustainability includecommunity support, collaboration, and use of a variety of sustainability mechanisms (e.g., grants, user fees, advisory boards). Obstacles to sustainability include longer-term funding, inadequate numbers of staff, and lack of committed staff.

Factors related to sustainability include community awareness of the value of the program, a local champion, strong leadership, fit of the project within a lead agency, type or attributes of community changes produced by the project, and strength of alliances between community organizations with similar missions.

Factors leading to policy change includehaving outside developers share decision-making with community planners; networking with other community leaders; community leader involvement in policy and program implementation; standardized training of community leaders, vendors, and program providers, and use of comprehensive, multi-component community prevention programs. Barriers include shifts in federal focus of priorities, length of time between policy planning and enactment, and variability in completion of policy activities.

Factors related to program adoption include characteristics of the innovation (relative advantage, complexity, trialability, observability); communication channels; timing; infrastructure factors; opinion leadership; and social system norms. Factors related to sustainability include compatibility of innovation with clients' needs and resources; involvement with the innovation (ownership); process of individual diffusion (knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, confirmation); and process of organizational diffusion (agenda-setting, matching, redefining/restructuring, clarifying, routinizing).

Operational indicators of sustainability include maintenance of benefits achieved through the initial program, level of institutionalization of the program within an organization, and changes in the capacity of the targeted community. Three major groups of factors that influence sustainability are project design and implementation, factors within the organizational setting, and factors in the broader community.

Teacher/researcher issues that affect sustainability include teacher knowledge and adequate opportunity to weave it into the research; teacher attitudes, including beliefs about the effectiveness of the research and the extent to which research findings should/could influence teaching; contextual factors, including the multiple demands on teachers from their environments; researchers who are open to input from teachers and other school staff; and mutual respect, sensitivity, and responsiveness between teacher and researchers. Other challenges to sustaining research-based educational practices occur when the consequences of implementing a particular research-based practice are not immediately apparent, teachers believe that their pre-research practices are moderately effective, and/or teachers don't believe that there is enough consensus among researchers to warrant a change in their teaching practices.

This guide uses decision trees to map the choices involved in selecting an appropriate statistical technique for a given analysis. More than 100 different statistics or statistical techniques are included in the guide. Some knowledge of statistics is assumed.

This guide provides practitioners with basic evaluation concepts and tools. It describes commonly used research designs and their strengths and weaknesses. Qualitative and quantitative data collection methods used in process and outcome evaluation are described. Basic concepts in data analysis are also discussed.

This monograph provides the information program administrators need to integrate evaluation ino their programs naturally, using their own staffs or consultants. Separate essays offer an overview of the evaluation process, tools for measuring the effectiveness of one specific type of violence prevention program, and a comprehensive review of assessment resources currently available in print and over the Internet. The document also includes a table of school violence resource guides and a school violence resource guide content checklist. Ordering Information can be obtained online at http://eric-web.tc.columbia.edu.

This handbook was written for evaluator-practitioner teams working to apply their skills in the assessment and improvement of prevention programs. Topics include models of prevention, evaluation design, indicators and measures for process and outcome evaluation, and reporting evaluation results. It contains an extensive appendix on instruments and data sources.

This handbook provides program managers with a comprehensive tool for guiding their evaluation efforts. It discusses instruments and activities for determining program effectiveness (outcome evaluation) and for documenting and monitoring the delivery of services (process evaluation). The major topics it addresses are evaluation design, measuring outcomes, measuring implementation, data collection, data analysis, and reporting study findings. Worksheets, sample instruments, and a bibliography are included.

This book summarizes basic information on research and evaluation methods. It is intended to help practitioners choose the best technique for a particular study. The major topics include planning evaluation and research studies, research design and methods, instrumentation and measurement, data analysis, and reporting a research study. It contains many tables and worksheets.

This handbook provides a framework for thinking about evaluation as a program tool. It was written for project directors with direct responsibility for the evaluation of Kellogg Foundation-funded projects. It discusses how to prepare for an evaluation (e.g., developing evaluation questions, budgeting for evaluation, selecting an evaluator), designing and conducting an evaluation (e.g., data collection methods, analyzing and interpreting data), and reporting findings. The handbook contains worksheets, charts, and a bibliography on evaluation. Full text available online at http://www.wkkf.org/pubs/Pub770.pdf.

This handbook was written for school and community agency staff to carry out required evaluations under the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act. The premise of this book is that many evaluations that use simple designs can be conducted without formal training in program evaluation. The author outlines checkpoints in the evaluation process where practitioners may want to consult with evaluation specialists. Topics discussed include evaluation design, data collection methods and instruments, and interpreting and reporting findings. The handbook describes implementation of an evaluation of a hypothetical prevention program. This publication can be ordered through ERIC at http://www.ed.gov/pubs/pubdb.html.

Addressed to program managers, this guide describes the process involved in conducting a simple evaluation (formative, process, impact, and outcome), how to hire an evaluator, and how to incorporate evaluation activities into a prevention program. Appendices include information on sample questionnaire/interview items, events or activities to observe, and types of records to maintain. The guide provides a glossary and a bibliography on evaluation. It also includes sources of information on violence; injuries that take place in the home, on the road, or during leisure activities; acute care, rehabilitation, and disabilities; and general sources on injury control/prevention. Ordering information for this publication is available at
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/demonstr.htm.