COMMUNITY READINESS AND PREVENTION PROGRAMS

Abstract

Community norms and values are important factors affecting the support of community-based development efforts. This is particularly the case when the programs are prevention efforts, including drug education programs. The purpose of this article is to describe a way to measure the readiness of a community to support drug prevention education. The readiness scale was based on the classic community development models of the social action process (Beal, 1964) and the innovation decision-making process (Rogers, 1994). Development of the scale was based on construction of 45 anchor rating statements for five dimensions of a prevention program and nine stages of community readiness. The community readiness scale was designed for use by community development practitioners working in the field of prevention, through key informants interviews with selected community leaders. Results from 45 communities indicated a bi-modal distribution of readiness levels. Implications of the results and experiences in developing and measuring community readiness are discussed in terms of community-based strategies and the potential to apply the concept of readiness to other areas of community development.