Community coalitions lead, sponsor or facilitate many of the prevention-oriented activities to improve youth and family health and well-being. Often, technical assistance providers offer coalitions guidance and resources to help them succeed.

To better understand the role that technical assistance providers play in supporting coalition success, Penn State researchers developed a new measure to capture the interpersonal dynamic between technical assistance providers and coalition leaders.

“Technical assistance is a complex and dynamic process,” said Sarah Chilenski, research professor at the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center and lead author of the paper in Prevention Science describing the measure and the process used to develop it. “We wanted to develop a measure that is relevant for researchers, technical assistance providers and coalition members.”

The research team used a human-centered design approach to focus on the needs and perspectives of coalition leaders and their technical assistance providers, which had been largely missing from the body of research on community prevention coalitions. They interviewed 8 technical assistance providers and 8 coalition leaders from the U.S. and Mexico using empathic inquiry, an approach to interviewing that involves asking broad questions about users’ experiences and actively listening to understand the person’s experiences, emotions and perspectives.

“In the end, it is all about supporting quality and effective work in the community—and that’s what leads to sustained improvements in public health.”

—Sarah Chilenski, research professsor, Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center

The participant interviews started with questions such as, “Could you tell me about the best day you’ve had at work over the past month? What were you doing who were you with? What made this such a great day?” The interviewer then moved to questions about days when technical assistance interactions were taking place. This approach allowed the research team to uncover coalition leaders’ needs and understand participants’ emotional states in their analysis, said Meg Small, director of social innovation at the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center and co-author of the paper.

The team then used heat mapping to analyze specific responses from participants to develop and validate the new measure.

The process resulted in a measure with the following categories of questions to characterize the collaborative working relationship between coalition leaders and their technical assistance providers, including a scale to assess each item.

• Competence autonomy support: The technical assistance providers’ active support of the implementers’ ability to independently lead coalition activities successfully (1 = never to 5 = always)
• Responsiveness: Prompt and effective communication and follow-through on tasks (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree)
• Authentic and meaningful participation: Enthusiastic, empathetic, honest, and transparent interactions; create a space for true and equally valued contributions (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree)
• Co-creation: Working together to develop plans, ensuring mutual participation, solving problems collaboratively (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree)
• Trust and rapport: The degree to which the technical assistance provider and the coalition leader get along well with each other and have confidence in each other’s work (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree)
• Compliance: The degree to which the technical assistance provider or coalition leader participates in (or provides) technical assistance activities because they have to or are required to (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree)
• Negative interactions: Interactions are unpredictable, threatening, unpleasant, unclear, and irrelevant (1 = never to 5 = always)

Applications for technical assistance providers and researchers

Chilenski identified practical applications of the new measure:

• Technical assistance providers can use the measure to self-diagnose how things are going, what may need improvement, or help them identify if something is going wrong.
• Employers can use the measure help identify important characteristics to focus on when training new technical assistance providers.
• Researchers can use the measure to help understand why some technical assistance works and why some doesn’t.

“We hypothesize that a supportive, collaborative working relationship helps the coalition leader and coalition integrate new knowledge and skills into their work,” Chilenski said.

“In the end, it is all about supporting quality and effective work in the community—and that’s what leads to sustained improvements in public health.”