Commentary on Participation in Preventive Interventions

In this commentary on the special issue, Preventive Parenting Interventions: Advancing Conceptualizations and Enhancing Reach, operationalization of participation, who engages in prevention interventions, and common themes from the studies are discussed. The papers in the special issue illustrate the importance of studying factors that increase participation in prevention and point out the need for additional research to understand these factors. These papers highlight the diverse conceptualizations of participation as well as a need to move toward standardization of methods to assess related constructs. Research is needed to elucidate the potential of enhanced participation and engagement in interventions to meaningfully impact intervention outcomes and ultimately improve the population-level benefit attributable to prevention efforts. Prevention scientists should attend to factors influencing participation in prevention as early in the intervention research process as possible in order to increase the likelihood that the target population will utilize evidence-based prevention interventions in real-world settings, under real-world conditions.