Back to index of Special News Reports
Identifying Promising Approaches to be included in Community Interventions September 2009
There is increasing evidence that multi-component programmes (MCPs) can be an effective way of impacting on local drinking trends and alcohol-related harms. MCPs have consisted of different groups of projects, targeting different outcomes and there is a need to identify which projects might be most suited and most effective within a MCP. The Alcohol Education & Research Council in collaboration with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation wish to fund a study to identify the most promising projects for inclusion in such a programme.
Intervention areas might include:
- Schools – alcohol/substance use education.
- Local media campaigns
- Parental/family interventions.
- Community engagement.
- Control/surveillance/enforcement approaches.
- Training of front-line staff.
- Local licensing and venue design issues.
- Community infrastructure – e.g. transport, lighting.
- Brief interventions.
- Youth work approaches.
The aim will be to identify the most promising approaches under these (and probably other) headings.
We expect applicants to devise methods of searching for and identifying promising approaches but the following guidelines might be useful.
We expect the researchers to identify criteria which will determine the degree to which projects are ‘promising’. These criteria might include whether the project is theoretically-underpinned (or has a clear rationale), its applicability to the UK and evidence of transferability, its cost/practicality for a community project, the level of detailed practical knowledge and experience of implementation, outcome evaluations, evidence of sustainability etc.
The focus of this work will be on the UK, so where projects have been implemented in the UK, these should be prioritised. Where they have not, or where more effective approaches have been implemented elsewhere, the researchers will be expected to draw on learning from abroad but with a careful eye to cross-cultural transferability.
Questions to be addressed will include whether the project has been evaluated; what type of evaluation; the likely resource implications, including money and people and which are more likely to be readily interwoven with other projects.
We envisage two key outputs (although we are open to discussion on this). First, a full report on the promising projects and the degree to which they fulfil the criteria. At this stage, we would like to see some testing of the ideas with local people engaged with projects on the ground. A second and main output will be a user-friendly, accessible output for a wide audience of local and national policy-makers and practitioners. We expect this second report to include a brief examination of relevant policies and targets and the relevance of MCPs to these. We also wish to see brief coverage of the question of who might take the lead in developing MCPs and what structures need to be in place to support them.
Methods would include interviews with project developers to identify uccesses and failures, reviewing the published literature, focusing on project evaluations, reviews already undertaken and grey literature. We want the second output to contain detailed descriptions of the projects.
£40,000 will be made available for this work. We expect the work to take 6 months and we would like the project to commence as soon as possible.
Assessment Process:
Applications will be peer- reviewed by a panel of experts from the JRF and the AERC. Consideration will be given to the extent to which proposals align with the call’s remit, scientific quality or methodologies, innovative methods and ideas, expertise of the research team, demonstrated track record of undertaking and delivering work of this nature, potential to contribute and advance the existing research base and value for money.
The deadline for applications is December 1st
For an easy way to stay up to date with new content, subscribe to our RSS feed.
To bookmark this page or share it with others, use the Add This button.