Quality and Quantity: A Synergistic Method for Predicting Coalition Outcomes

Introduction: Coalitions with the ultimate goal of improving long-term population-level health outcomes can, under the right conditions, succeed in bringing about the intermediate outcomes of policy and practice change. Yet inconsistencies continue to exist regarding how to define community coalition effectiveness as well as the coalition-building factors that influence coalition success. Much of the research focuses on elements of capacity often defining capacity internally as aspects of coalition functioning, or externally as human, material, and financial resources (Nargiso et al., 2013; Wandersman et al., 2008). Studies also indicate that member participation, membership diversity, agency collaboration, and group cohesion are important indicators of coalition effectiveness (Zakocs & Edwards, 2006). This study introduces a new way of looking at the impact of capacity on coalition success. Preliminary research demonstrates that combining the elements of partner diversity and the degree of partner involvement, rather than looking at them separately, predicts a coalition’s ability to create a policy/practice change.

Method: This study uses CADCA’s Annual Survey data collected between 2010 and 2014. This national survey gathers information from around 700 substance abuse prevention coalitions each year. We define coalition effectiveness as whether or not a coalition helped bring about a policy change in the past year, and how many. Linear, binary, and ordinal regressions were used to explore associations between internal and external elements of capacity (budget, staff, volunteers, environmental strategy implementation, # of partnerships, degree of partnership involvement) and coalition effectiveness. We developed a new variable for analysis called the Collaboration Score (CS); a weighted combination of the quantity and quality of coalition partnerships.  

Results: Slightly more than half of the coalitions created a new policy. Quality collaboration with a large number of community partners significantly predicts a coalition’s ability to engage in environmental strategies which lead to policy creation. Also, our newly developed Collaboration Score (CS) explains up to 80% of the variance in environmental strategy engagement, which highly predicts new policy outcomes.

Conclusions: The CS appears to be an important element of capacity related to coalition policy outcomes. By combining the breadth of coalition partnerships with the degree that they contribute to a coalition’s strategic efforts, we can account for the synergistic impact of community collaborations. Funders interested in coalition policy change should consider both breadth and depth of partner involvement when assessing a coalition’s capacity to produce policy change.