This SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) Phase II project will establish the Sociometrics Training Institute for Development and Evaluation (IPDE). The Institute will link research and practice in the development, implementation, and evaluation of teen pregnancy prevention and teen STD/HIV/AIDS prevention programs. A professional development certificate in Program Development and Evaluation will be offered to individuals who take a specified curriculum. Phase I developed the Institute's curriculum and prototype course materials with input from a Practitioner Advisory Panel consisting of 15 representatives of the target market: teachers, directors and staff members of community-based organizations, family planning/managed care clinic-based practitioners, and program evaluators. Phase I also demonstrated the feasibility of the Institute's granting participants continuing education unit (CEU) and other professional credits useful for job advancement. The Institute course material will be developed and field tested in Phase II. Recognizing the diversity of individual learning styles and the varying time and funding available to the nation's teachers and practitioners, the IPDE will be offered in several formats. One will be in-person workshops and courses held during the summer at a university near Sociometrics' office (Stanford) and at annual meetings of relevant professional organizations. The other will be a correspondence course program, in which practitioners can go over the training curricula and materials in their own homes, schools, or offices, and obtain continuing education credit by passing brief examinations. The correspondence course materials will consist of user's choice of either a printed guidebook, access to on-line course material on the Internet, or an interactive CD-ROM.
Unmarried pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease among adolescents are problems of national concern. Many pregnancy and STD/HIV/AIDS prevention programs, with a variety of approaches and assumptions, have been developed and implemented. The formal training to be provided by the proposed Institute will encourage ongoing scientific evaluation of these programs to ascertain the robustness of each program's effectiveness (or lack thereof) across different study populations. National concern with the problems addressed by the Institute suggests a widespread demand for the Institute.
