A Study of Effectiveness of Prevention Programs in Croatia

There is an increasing focus on the effectiveness in prevention of mental, emotional and behavioral problems and promotion of mental health worldwide. Available scientific knowledge from earlier successful and unsuccessful trials to prevent these problems offers a base for designing and implementing effective prevention programs and effective local, national and international prevention policies. Nation and colleagues (2003) have found, just as Dryfoos (1998) that there is substantial overlap in the principles of effective programs across mental health promotion and prevention domains that allow us to identify general principles of the effectiveness. Determinants of an intervention’s impact or effect are referred to as “effect predictors” or “effect moderators” (Hosman, 1994; Hosman & Engels, 1999; Raphael, 1999). General principles gleaned from effective interventions may help mental health promotion and prevention practitioners to select, modify or create more effective programs.

This paper will present the results of the doctoral research focused on assessing the quality and effectiveness of the cohort of 24 mental health promotion and preventive interventions in Croatia. These interventions represent community interventions which are financed though the local tenders and public funds of the Region of Istria. Study was conducted within the collaboration of University of Zagreb, Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences and the Region of Istria, Department of Health and Social Services. Presented study was a part of the wider project “Preffi: Quality assurance in the Region of Istria”. Main aim of this doctoral study was to assess the quality of 24 interventions’ written proposal with the instrument – Preffi 2.0 (Molleman, Peters, Hommels, & Ploeg, 2003). Preffi 2.0 instrument is a quality assessment and quality assurance instrument which consists of 39 quality criteria – effect predictors, variables that are demonstrably related to the program’s intended output. This study also explored the effectiveness of all 24 interventions and analysed the predictive validity of the Preffi 2.0 instrument. The main intention was to examine if interventions that accomplish higher scores on the Preffi 2.0 instrument achieve more effective outcomes than interventions that accomplish lower scores on the Preffi instrument.  

Based on the results, paper will offer contributions and suggestions for improving the effectiveness of mental health promotion and prevention interventions in general but especially regarding the community-based interventions. Hierarchical linear modelling was applied in analysing the validity of the Preffi 2.0 instrument in predicting the effectiveness of the interventions.