Promotion of evaluation as a strategy towards an effective substance prevention

A growing number of European initiatives focusing on the evaluation and monitoring of substance abuse prevention is observed. At the beginning of the 90s a team from the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology in Warsaw, Poland, began a project designed for the promotion of evaluation in the field of substance abuse prevention. The project included outcome studies on popular school-based programs and development of teaching materials and publications to popularize the concept and methods of evaluation. As results of the project several outcome studies were completed, several scales for evaluating alcohol prevention programs were developed, a number of articles and a handbook on evaluation were published.