Xchange Implementation toolbox
The Xchange implementation toolbox combines didactical elements with training tools and guidelines to help professionals to make their interventions ready for inclusion in Xchange and fitter for real-life use. It also seeks to stimulate exchange and cooperation within the research community. The toolbox highlights important elements to consider when designing a study for an environmental strategy or manualised programme.
How to improve intervention design
- Paso a Paso (Step by Step) is an interactive support system for the planning and development of interventions. It has been developed for the COPOLAD project with EMCDDA input, and it is based on the EMCDDA PERK manual. It is available in English and Spanish.
- While Paso a Paso supports manualised interventions, the European Drug Prevention Quality Standards (EDPQS) are a useful tool for any type of prevention intervention, and it comes with its own toolbox, with tools that describe and support the development of interventions with understandable logic models.
- The Collective Impact Forum also provides useful tools for this purpose.
How to improve evaluation study design
- The main product of Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) is the CONSORT Statement, an evidence-based minimum set of recommendations for reporting randomized trials. It offers a standard way to prepare reports of trial findings, facilitating their complete and transparent reporting, and aiding their critical appraisal and interpretation. The CONSORT Statement comprises a 25-item checklist and a flow diagram. The checklist items focus on reporting how the trial was designed, analysed, and interpreted; the flow diagram displays the progress of all participants through the trial. The CONSORT 2010 Explanation and Elaboration updated guidelines explain and illustrate the principles underlying the CONSORT Statement and should be used in conjunction with the CONSORT Statement. Extensions to the CONSORT Statement provide additional guidance for randomised control trials with specific designs, data and interventions.
- Simple scales of measurable outcomes, as required in Xchange, may be selected from the EMCDDA Evaluation Instruments Bank.
How to make interventions relevant, i.e. how to match interventions to the needs and risk profile of a particular population or area
- Communities That Care (CTC) is a method that municipalities can use to plan and steer their prevention work. Existing needs and resources in prevention can be identified with CTC. The CTC questionnaires for the diagnosis of local challenges can be found here (see also the US original CTC and the German and Dutch implementations). A most interesting feature of CTC is that the questionnaires help to make a risk profile of each county or even city council and allow for a broader behavioural picture of youth than just prevalence rates. These profiles in turn can inform the selection of the most appropriate programmes from Xchange or other national and regional registries. With the use of CTC, municipalities can make their prevention activities in the field of social development of children and adolescents precise, effective and verifiable in their success.
- Intervention mapping tools help in accurately describing the mechanisms of behavioural change of any intervention, be it a manualised programme or an environmental prevention strategy. They improve terminology and clarity about what is actually the ingredient of a programme or strategy. See for instance intervention mapping and effective behaviour change.
- The Toolbox on Community-Oriented Policing in the European Union Today is a joint European Crime Prevention Network (EUCPN)/European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training (CEPOL) publication and it describes a number of recent good practices from EU Member States with regard to community-oriented policing (COP) for crime prevention.
- Have a look at the EMCDDA publications to find out more about the conceptual foundations of environmental prevention and of prevention systems.
