Measuring coalition member participation in activities to promote smoke free air policy change

Community-level interventions have been a key strategy for health promotion interventions for several decades. However, evaluators have found it challenging to associate program activities with outcomes. In part, this is attributed to the challenges of measuring community coalition capacity and efforts. In this study, we examined how 9 Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation-supported coalitions identified, recruited and utilized members to conduct core strategies focused on local smoke-free air policies. We conducted interviews with coalition coordinators and all active members, defined as those organizations who participated in at least 50% of the coalition's meetings and/or activities. Coordinators described the qualities they sought in new members. For each of 4 possible strategies--public education, media advocacy, educating policymakers and advocating with decision-makers--members were asked to indicate whether they provided materials or information to support the activity; helped plan the activity; and/or attended the activity. The member's participation in each type of activity was the sum of responses, such that a member could receive a participation score of 0 (no participation) to 3. The average level of member participation by coalition was 1.9 (participated in 2 of 3 possible ways), with individual coalition member participation ranging from 1.1 (participated in only 1 of 3 ways) to 2.5. Despite the fact that coordinators recruited members for both public education and advocacy skills, they were most likely to engage their members in public education activities and least likely to engage them in advocacy activities.