Prevention Center of Excellence
Annotated Bibliography: Substance Abuse Prevention & Social Indicators
in Needs Assessment
Substance Abuse Prevention & Social Indicators in Needs Assessment
available in PDF.
(Download Acrobat Reader)
Compiled by Clare Desrosiers
June 6, 2006
Gorman, D. M., & Labouvie, E. W. (2000). Using social indicators to
inform community drug and alcohol prevention policy. Journal of
Public Health Policy, 21(4), 428-446.
The authors describe their study, which examined whether the
analysis of social indicators as a needs assessment is an effective
way to determine need for prevention programming. Their conclusion
is that “needs assessments using social indicator data are feasible
and capable of providing data…that allow one to address issues of
resource allocation.” This approach to needs assessment is one of
the first steps in prevention program planning.
Stolzenberg, L., D’Alessio, S. J., Rivers, J. E., Newell, A. L.
(2003). Measuring substance abuse treatment need among adults in
Florida: A social indicators approach. Social Indicators Research, 61(1),
19-57.
This article provides background information about the social
indicator approach to substance abuse prevention and intervention
needs assessment. It distinguishes between indicators of use and
indicators of consequences, defines the indicators used in the study
and reports where the indicators were obtained. The authors
developed and used indexes to estimate alcohol and controlled
substance abuse treatment needs and established the reliability and
validity of the indexes. Finally, the article presents information
on two types of previously used needs assessment scales which they
used in conjunction to the indexes they developed. They conclude
that the substance abuse estimates obtained from their analysis “are
valuable for standardizing the level of treatment need…[and to help]
policymakers make better-informed treatment resources allocation
decisions.”
