Selection Criteria Prioritization
This process develops group consensus by allowing individuals to identify their own priorities about how a decision should be made and then using the individual priorities to form a set of group priorities. In this case, the decision is about the criteria to be used to select the consequence, consumption, or intervening variables to be recommended to the full coalition as the priorities of the group.
The process is very simple. Each of the boxes represents a choice between two criteria. The criteria are listed on the right. The number for each criterion corresponds to the number in each column.
To get started, focus on the upper left corner. The first choice is between criteria 1 – Availability of Data and 2 – Biggest “bang” for the buck. The criteria appear in the list alphabetically. For yourself, decide which of those two criteria is most important and write the number in the box. If you need clarification about what a criterion means, there are definitions and examples provided on the following pages for each of the criteria.
Once you have made a selection for the first box, complete column 1. Then, move onto the number 2 column and so on until the form is completed.
The final step is to count the number of times you selected each of the criteria and record that number. So, you would count how many times the number 1 appears in the boxes and enter that total in the “1” box in the total section at the bottom of the page. Repeat this for each of the other criteria. When asked, provide your totals for each category. Your totals will be added to the totals from other people in the group. The criteria that are selected most often are the then the first criteria used in selecting your priorities. All of your other criteria will also be used, just in descending order.
Note: Your group can add criteria but you must describe the type of data that exists about the criteria before it can be added to the list, similar to the definitions we have provided.
1 - / ______2 - / ______
1 / 3 - / ______
2 / 4 - / ______
3 / 5 - / ______
4 / 6 - / ______
5 / 7 - / ______
6 / 8 - / ______
7 / 9 - / ______
8 / 10 - / ______
9
10
Totals – the number of times you selected each number
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10Definitions of criteria and application to exercise
Availability of data
Definition: data – qualitative or quantitative - is available that describes the number of people involved, the severity of impact, or some other facet of the problem. The data should be available at the start of the process so comparisons can be made to see if selected strategies are having their desired impact.
Application to exercise – if there is no data about a problem, there are two choices. Either do not prioritize the item or find a way to develop the data.
Example: One person kept telling the group that he knew that youth were going to a particular drug store and buying Nyquil, a cough syrup with alcohol in it. He had no evidence other than he had witnessed it happening. The group asked the store for its total sales of cough syrup containing alcohol. The drug store manager was surprised by the number of sales, so the group sent members into the store to count the number of times youth actually came into the store and purchased Nyquil. The counters were surprised at the frequency of the event. They then had data and could objectively discuss whether the problem should be prioritized, or somehow addressed through delivery of one of their strategies. Without the data they had nothing to base their decision on and the person who reported the events would likely have felt disrespected and left the group.
Biggest "bang" for the buck
Definition: sometimes by impacting one problem, you can positively impact multiple problems.
Application to exercise – Some of the questions to ask yourself are: Do you think the group should be narrowly focused or broadly focused, How important is it to be able to impact a broad scope of problems?, Would using “biggest bang” as a criteria set the group up for disappointment if all of the potential impacts were not received? There needs to be a clear rationale presented for how targeting one problem could impact other problems.
Example: Reducing youth alcohol, tobacco and other drug use is directly correlated with increased academic performance, lower suicide rates, less juvenile crime, etc. With reduction of underage drinking, the primary focus of the Prevention Redesign Initiative, there are intervening variables that are very strongly associated with underage drinking and others that are not as strongly focused.
Community ready to address
Definition: This is more than just whether there is someone in the community currently doing some programming around this issue. That is a part of it. But it’s really more about is there interest and support in the community to take the problem on.
Application to exercise – If this is a criteria you value highly, it will mean trying to find out what the community thinks and what it is ready to do. This generally involves some kind of survey or a series of interviews. Clear descriptions of how the community is ready to proceed need to be presented.
Example: Members of a Washington community coalition were totally convinced that other parents in their community not only supported underage drinking, but actively condoned it by buying alcohol for youth and hosting parties. The community survey, much to their surprise, showed a completely different viewpoint and they were able to start working on several intense problems.
High number of people impacted
Definition: how many people are directly impacted by this or how severely are they impacted?
Application to exercise – if there is a problem in the community that impacts nearly everyone, it would be a no-brainer to prioritize that problem. But how about problems that impact a relatively few people. Are they denied service because their need is not large enough? Again, there needs to be data about how many people are impacted.
Example: Consider the information available in the Data Book about Tenino. On page 11, we see that weapons incidents at school have increased from 1.3 per 1,000 youth through 2004 to 3.5 per 1,000 youth through 2009. And then, on page 75, when you look at the same indicator, the rate is 7 out of every 100 youth, or 70 out of 1,000 if we make it equivalent to the earlier rate measures. Sound like a problem? Most indicators will not show this huge amount of change. But what’s going on with this?
Impact on community
Definition: there are formulas that have been developed over time that describe, for instance, the economic impact from a DUI fatality, depending on the victim’s age. There are other ways to describe community impact such as the youth center was closed down due to continued vandalism and violence. You know that the youth center is shut down and it’s likely there is some announcement in the media about why.
Application to exercise – what are the impacts to your community from substance abuse? What do you see or hear about the impacts? If you’ve lived in the community for awhile, what are the changes that you’ve experienced, e.g., do you lock your doors now and you used to not lock your doors? The problem with this kind of information is it’s relatively easy to collect it once in a group but it is difficult to collect it again. And what would a desirable change to community impact be? Are people going to stop locking their doors? There needs to be a clear rationale presented for how the community is impacted by the problem.
Example: A Washington community coalition worked with the organizers of a major tourist event to eliminate the open consumption of alcohol by participants before the event. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people would congregate at the start of the event to watch the participants. One year, the participants were all drinking alcohol prior to the event. The next year they were not. What is the community impact?
The problem can be impacted with our funding
Definition: if the problem is huge – economic suffering in the community – our small funding is not going to have an impact. But we can help change perceptions of the likelihood that young people will get caught drinking by supporting law enforcement underage drinking enforcement efforts and by working with the media to get the news out about those events.
Application to exercise – In general, to have an impact with our funding, the problems need to be pretty local and they need to have the potential for solutions that are possible to implement with the people in the community. There needs to be a clear rationale presented for how the problem can be impacted during the grant period with the available funding.
Example: A prevention strategic plan we reviewed once started off with a vision of, “Making the world a better place, one person at a time.” Good thought. It would even make a great bumper sticker. But what does it call on people to do? The logic model built to support each community’s Prevention Redesign Initiative strategic planning process will be much more focused about what is envisioned to happen in order to change the community’s data.
Trends
Definition: data that is collected over time, like archival data or survey data, can be used to determine if a problem is getting better, worse or staying the same. The summary charts in the Data Book talk about whether trends are increasing, decreasing or no change. We need to be very careful, though, in the way we look at these data because an increase in a risk factor for substance abuse is a bad thing but an increase in a protective factor is a good thing.
Application to exercise – Will you only prioritize data elements that are showing a negative pattern, e.g., increasing risk factors or decreasing protective factors? What about data indicators that have gotten worse over the years and your goal is to keep them from getting worse? Not necessarily getter. Just not worse. Again, there needs to be data about what the trends of data show.
Example: There are dozens of trend charts in the Data Book. When you look at them, look for instances where the local line (the dark line in the charts) is consistently higher over time than the comparison line. Then determine what kind of a data indicator you’re looking at. If it’s a protective factor, consistently higher than the comparison over time is a good think. If it’s a risk factor, consistently higher over time is a bad thing.