The relative importance of provider, program, school, and community predictors of the implementation quality of school-based prevention programs.

Previous research has demonstrated the importance of a variety of factors on the implementation of school-based prevention programs, specifically characteristics of program providers, program structure, school climate, and school and community structure. The current study expands this research by examining the potential relationships between all of these factors and implementation quality in a series of multilevel models. Using data from a nationally representative sample of 3,730 program providers surveyed in 544 schools, it was found that program structure characteristics were of greater importance in the prediction of high quality implementation than were characteristics of the program providers, school climate, and school and community structure. Implications of these findings are discussed.