This award builds on an NIH-funded cluster-randomized trial to test whether providing implementation support through community development teams impacts a county’s decision to adopt the Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care, an evidence-based child welfare program. With this award, Palinkas will conduct an embedded study of the adoption process. He will examine how the social networks of social service agency directors influence their decisions to adopt an evidence-based program, focusing on how opinion leaders and organizational culture and climate affect adoption. Semi-structured interviews and surveys will be used to collect data on the structure of the social networks and how the networks influence the ways practitioners understand research evidence. These data will be supplemented by participant observations that allow for a less-intrusive and more process-focused examination of adoption processes.
This award builds on an NIH-funded cluster-randomized trial to test whether providing implementation support through community development teams impacts a county’s decision to adopt the Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care, an evidence-based child welfare program. With this award, Palinkas will conduct an embedded study of the adoption process. He will examine how the social networks of social service agency directors influence their decisions to adopt an evidence-based program, focusing on how opinion leaders and organizational culture and climate affect adoption. Semi-structured interviews and surveys will be used to collect data on the structure of the social networks and how the networks influence the ways practitioners understand research evidence. These data will be supplemented by participant observations that allow for a less-intrusive and more process-focused examination of adoption processes.
