Pamela Orpinas, Ph.D., professor of health promotion and behavior at the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health, has published a measurement manual aimed at helping researchers and others who work with Latino families evaluate programs to prevent problems of risky behaviors in adolescents.
Co-authors of the manual are Adriana Rico, a UGA MPH program alumnus, and Lourdes Martínez, a doctoral student in health promotion and behavior at UGA. Both Rico and Martínez currently work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The compendium, Latino Families and Youth: A compendium of assessment tools, was published by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). Originally, the compendium was designed to identify assessment tools appropriate for evaluating the “Familias Fuertes” program. Familias Fuertes is a community-based parenting and family strengthening program designed to reduce risk behaviors among adolescents. It has been implemented in 13 countries in the Latin America, as well as the United States, and is continually expanding.
The intense support and interest of researchers, however, led PAHO to expand the manual to include additional scales relevant to the area of family and adolescence. This compendium summarizes more than 50 scales that have been evaluated in different countries of Latin America or in the United States for use with Latino families.
All the assessment tools in the compendium, which is available in English and Spanish versions, are free. Researchers may use them without requesting permission from the authors, unless otherwise indicated in the section entitled “Copyright.” Authors will appreciate receiving a copy of publications that have used their scales.
Publication information:
Orpinas, P., Rico, A., & Martínez, L. (2013). Latino Families and Youth: A compendium of assessment tools (English version; www.bit.ly/measurementmanual). Familias Latinas y jóvenes: Un compendio de herramientas de evaluación (Spanish version; www.bit.ly/manualdemedicion). Washington, D.C.: Pan American Health Organization.
Posted October 10, 2013.
