University of Massachusetts Medical School; Graduate School of Nursing, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, MA, 01655.
DAISA Enterprises, LLC, 33 Bradford Street, Concord, MA, 01742.
J Sch Health. 2020 Jan;90(1):65-69. doi: 10.1111/josh.12850. Epub 2019 Nov 24.
Youth violence is a significant problem affecting community health. Community-academic partnerships can advance youth nonviolence education by synergizing the strengths of collaborators while working toward a common goal. We describe a collaboration between an urban public middle school, community nonprofit, and university-based graduate school of nursing in implementing and evaluating the Healthy Power program, a school-based youth nonviolence program for middle-school boys.
A participatory program evaluation approach was used to plan and implement evaluation of the Healthy Power program with a cohort of 8 students. Collaborative planning allowed for the selection of measures that reflected program objectives and were of value to community partners while also scientifically sound. A mixed-methods approach included a focus group and a pretest-posttest with quantitative items and open-ended questions.
While the quantitative pre-posttest did not show any significant change, the open-ended questions and focus group suggested that students had advanced their understanding and application of conflict resolution skills.
The findings support the usefulness of community-academic partnerships for peace/conflict resolution education and program evaluation. Such programs may benefit from mixed methods of evaluation.
青年暴力是一个影响社区健康的重大问题。通过协同合作方的优势，同时朝着共同目标努力，社区学术伙伴关系可以促进青年非暴力教育。我们描述了一所城市公立中学、社区非营利组织和大学护理研究生院之间的合作，以实施和评估“健康力量”计划，这是一个针对中学男生的基于学校的青年非暴力计划。
采用参与式方案评估方法，对 8 名学生进行“健康力量”计划的规划和评估。协作规划允许选择反映计划目标并对社区合作伙伴有价值的措施，同时也具有科学依据。混合方法包括焦点小组和预测试后测试，其中包含定量项目和开放式问题。
虽然定量的预测试后测试没有显示出任何显著的变化，但开放式问题和焦点小组表明，学生已经提高了他们对冲突解决技能的理解和应用。
研究结果支持社区学术伙伴关系在和平/冲突解决教育和方案评估方面的有用性。此类计划可能受益于混合方法的评估。
