Innovation and the Use of Research Evidence in Public Youth-Serving Agencies: Phase I

California and several counties in Ohio are currently undergoing a large, federally funded trial investigating an attempt to implement an evidence-based, statewide foster care program (Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care, or MTFC) with the help of Community Development Teams (CDT). CDTs are run by an intermediary organization and consist of multi-agency meetings and technical assistance to support adoption and implementation of MTFC. This grant will allow the investigator to capitalize on the opportunity presented by this trial; he will have access to agency leaders who are in the midst of making decisions about adopting and implementing the program, and he will study how they acquire research evidence on the program and other relevant topics, how they interpret the evidence, and how the evidence influences their decisions. He will examine the roles that external conditions, agency culture and climate, agency leaders’ social networks, and the Community Development Team intervention play in the decision-making process. Palinkas will conduct interviews, focus groups, and surveys with leaders of mental health and child welfare agencies and probation departments in all 58 California counties and 12 Ohio counties and will use this data to develop measures of individuals’ evidence use; consensus about evidence use among decision-makers; and negotiation, compromise, and agreement about evidence use.