Best Practices Principles
Critical review of the SIGNALS© Preservation Awareness Development Model reveals that “best practice” principles are being utilized. For example, the SIGNALS program, from its inception, incorporated the extensive research of Prochaska and DiClemente (1982) on The Stages of Change , and how people correct problematic attitudes and behaviors. The SIGNALS program also utilized the language stemming from the Institute of Medicine (1994) when implementing strategies for Universal, Selected, and Indicated prevention audiences. In addition, further review of the SIGNALS program indicates that the curriculum also incorporates the research of Rollnick and Miller (2002).
SIGNALS instructors apply “Motivational Interviewing or Enhancement” as an effective means to direct youth towards safer and more positive thinking, feeling, and behavior. SIGNALS also uses “Motivational Interviewing” when reviewing the screening instruments and self-assessments that are included in the curriculum. In addition to the mentoring and coaching aspects of SIGNALS, particular emphasis is also placed upon the cultural needs of the youth. Again research-based principles, as developed by the University Of Kentucky’s Structured Behavioral Outpatient Rural Therapy (SBORT) Project (Leukefeld et. al., 2000), are employed to provide an instrumental influence on the specific teaching methods of the SIGNALS curriculum.
In brief, SIGNALS employs the research based framework of “The Stages Of Change” and then integrates it with the cultural sensitivity of “Structured Storytelling”, a variation on a component of the field tested SBORT Project, while at the same time implementing the mentoring and coaching aspects from the Motivational Interviewing or Enhancement paradigm. Thus armed with a strong researched based rationale, SIGNALS sequentially introduces techniques, tasks, and lesson plans specifically developed to best assist youth in contemplating change about substance use and moving them through the stages necessary to alter one’s actions.
In the prevention field, ”best practices” are considered to be “prevention strategies, activities or approaches, which have shown through research and evaluation to be effective in the prevention and/or delay of substance use or abuse”
Stages of Change: Pre-contemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, Maintenance, Relapse/Recycling
