Exploring Partnership Transfer Effects in a CBPR Prevention Intervention: The Padres Informados/Jóvenes Preparados Experience

Introduction: There is a growing interest in addressing complex issues through community-university research collaboration. Although quality collaboration contributes to impactful research, little is known about how in the process, the collaborative work contributes to new community-community partnerships (collaboration transfer). Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is an approach to research that facilitates collaboration by increasing trust and capacity among partners.

 Padres Informados/Jóvenes Preparados (Padres) is a CBPR, NIH funded, longitudinal prevention research intervention.  We assess our collaboration among seven community and university partners annually. To understand contributors to collaboration transfer, we analyzed two years of data using social network analysis (SNA).

Methods: An online survey was administered to participants in two study years.  Participants from collaborating agencies (three social service, two clinics, one public school, and one University Extension site) included directors, organization staff, and the core research team.

 Two factors from the larger collaborative survey were included in this analysis: Trust, and Collaboration Transfer. Trust included 6 items (using likert-type scale responses, 0= not at all to 3=a great extent) such as: ‘To what extent have you felt comfortable contributing to the decision making within Padres.’  Collaboration Transfer included 7 items, one rating per organization, with questions such as: ‘How is your organization connected to other agencies involved in this project?’ Response options were: no collaboration=0 (aware of this organization) to strong collaboration=3 (constant communication, shared decisions regarding resources).

 Analysis included descriptive statistics, correlation among Trust and Collaboration Transfer, and SNA (one node) using UCINET 6.4 software.

 Results: Participants responses indicated increased trust in the collaborative process and increase in collaboration transfer (depth and density) over time.  In five out of six Trust items, responses on average were ‘moderate’ (18%) to ‘great extent’ (82%) in the second year.  Statistically significant positive correlation (p<.05) between the Trust and Transfer scores (r=.62) were noted.  The single node SNA indicates the depth and density among collaborators is improving over time. Collaboration transfer for rural partners has not changed to the same degree as for urban partners. 

Conclusions: Results suggest the strength of partnerships among collaborators has improved in the last year. Increased trust in the collaboration is associated with increased collaboration transfer of partnership beyond the project at hand.   The quality of collaboration in CBPR projects contributes to successful research implementation, and can also lead to increased capacity for collaboration among community partners.