Indicator data can provide a wealth of information about the substance use and violence problems in your community, but this information is not always easy to obtain, of high quality, or available in an accessible form. Keep the following potential challenges in mind as you search for and obtain information.

• Data may be aggregated. Hospitals, for example, often combine adult and youth data or data across several communities. This can be frustrating if you are seeking isolated information about youth within your town. One way to circumvent this problem is by finding out if the agency can sort the data for you.

• Jurisdictions may overlap. For example, the jurisdiction boundary of your local police department may not correspond to school district boundaries. Also, geographic boundaries may have changed over the time period you are researching. Make sure to stay on top of this issue so that your prevention programs actually serve the students whose needs you assessed.

• Definitions may vary across agencies or over time. For example, school drop-out rates can be calculated in a variety of ways; some districts compare the number of students graduating in a given year to the number of students entering at the beginning of that year, while other districts compare the number of graduating students to the number of students entering freshman year. Thus, observed decreases in a district's drop-out rates may reflect changes in how the rate is calculated rather than actual changes in youth behavior.

• Time periods may be inconsistent. Take note of the time period covered by the data. Data from one agency may refer to calendar years, another to fiscal years, and another to school years.

• Data may be missing or incomplete. In many — if not most — instances, some information included on agency records will be missing or incomplete. If the amount of missing data is large, the data may provide an inaccurate picture of what's going on. For example, you might want to question the generalizability of a survey completed by only 20 percent of a school's seventh graders; those students may be different in several important ways from their classmates who did not complete the survey.

• Confidentiality issues may prevent access. Some data on individuals will not be accessible to you, such as information about specific incidences of student violence at school. In some cases, you may be granted access and then expected to take special steps to protect the privacy of the individuals described by the data.

References

Gruenewald, P. J., Treno, A. J., Taff, G., and Klitzner, P. J. (1997). Measuring Community Indicators: A Systems Approach to Drug and Alcohol Problems. Applied Social Research Methods (45). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Harding, W. (2000). Assessment: A Vital Preplanning Activity. Newton, MA: Northeast Center for the Application of Prevention Technologies, Education Development Center, Inc.

Hatry, H. P. (1994). Collecting Data from Agency Records. In Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Witkind, B. R. and Altschuld, J. W. (1995). Planning and Conducting Needs Assessments: A Practical Guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.