Defining Coalition Functioning: Measuring a Coalition's Community Problem Solving Capacity and Its Relationship to Coalition Effectiveness

Introduction: This session will provide findings from an empirical study examining the measurement and application of a coalition functioning model emphasizing the role coalitions play as community problem solvers for community and systems change. This framework emphasizes four critical elements necessary for coalitions to achieve population-level reductions in substance abuse rates: coalition infrastructure/capacity, use of key coalition processes, use of comprehensive strategies, and facilitation of community changes. Researchers developed a coalition survey measuring the key elements of this approach to coalition functioning, which includes both internal and external elements of coalition work. The survey has been used to study coalition functioning in substance abuse prevention coalitions and has been tested in a large-scale cross-sectional study to assess the model fit of the problem solving framework and in a longitudinal study to understand how coalitions grow in their capacity overtime.

Methods: A cross-sectional study with 551 coalitions was conducted to test the overall community problem solving model. These were a diverse set of coalitions, varying in age, geography, budget and funding. Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyze both the measurement and path models. A longitudinal follow-up study with 102 coalitions was conducted to examine how coalition functioning develops over time and the relationship of growth in the various elements in the model to each other. Growth curve modeling was used to examine the process through which coalitions changed over a 12 month period.

Results and Conclusions: Results from the analyses conducted in the cross-sectional study indicate good model fit. Infrastructure capacity includes leadership, use of planning processes and products, and membership components. Strategy capacity includes coalition implementation of comprehensive strategies to address substance abuse prevention. Community change capacity is related to coalition facilitation of both programmatic and policy/practice changes in the community. Longitudinal study findings suggest the model can be refined by separating planning processes and products from infrastructure capacity and creating an additional step in the community problem solving framework. Coalitions experienced statistically significant growth in each element of the model over the 12 month period, and it appears the components within the coalition functioning model are quite interdependent. The amount of change occurring in a prior step appears to influence the amount of change that occurs in a subsequent step in the model. Additionally, the level or amount of capacity reached in a prior step appears to influence the amount of capacity reached in a subsequent step.