An Evaluation of a Train-the-Trainer Workshop for Social Service Workers to Develop Community-Based Family Interventions

Abstract

IntroductionEvaluation studies on train-the-trainer workshops (TTTs) to develop family well-being interventions are limited in the literature. The Logic Model offers a framework to place some important concepts and tools of intervention science in the hands of frontline service providers. This paper reports on the evaluation of a TTT for a large community-based program to enhance family well-being in Hong Kong.MethodsThe 2-day TTT introduced positive psychology themes (relevant to the programs that the trainees would deliver) and the Logic Model (which provides a framework to guide intervention development and evaluation) for social service workers to guide their community-based family interventions. The effectiveness of the TTT was examined by self-administered questionnaires that assessed trainees’ changes in learning (perceived knowledge, self-efficacy, attitude, and intention), trainees’ reactions to training content, knowledge sharing, and benefits to their service organizations before and after the training and then 6 months and 1 year later. Missing data were replaced by baseline values in an intention-to-treat analysis. Focus group interviews were conducted approximately 6 months after training.ResultsFifty-six trainees (79% women) joined the TTT. Forty-four and 31 trainees completed the 6-month and 1-year questionnaires, respectively. The trainees indicated that the workshop was informative and well organized. The TTT-enhanced trainees’ perceived knowledge, self-efficacy, and attitudes toward the application of the Logic Model and positive psychology constructs in program design. These changes were present with small to large effect size that persisted to the 1 year follow-up. The skills learned were used to develop 31 family interventions that were delivered to about 1,000 families. Qualitative feedback supported the quantitative results.ConclusionThis TTT offers a practical example of academic-community partnerships that promote capacity among community social service workers. Goals included sharing basic tools of intervention development and evaluation, and the TTT offered, therefore, the potential of learning skills that extended beyond the lifetime of a single program.Clinical trial registrationThe research protocol was registered at the National Institutes of Health (identifier number: NCT01796275).

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“…The training workshop was assessed systematically by a four-level model-based evaluation [ 20 ]. The findings showed that the perceived knowledge, self-efficacy and attitude towards the topics covered significantly improved after training, which were similar to the findings of our previous TTT workshops for social workers to implement family well-being programs [ 37 , 38 ]. The effects on knowledge and attitude towards practice were sustained to one year, but not the self-efficacy.…”

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“…Academic-community partnerships are well established as a cost-effective approach for addressing nutrition challenges and public health disparities (43)(44)(45)(46) . A large body of research involving academic-community partnerships has reported significant valuable benefits such as shared resources, building institutional capacity, additional funding, managing and enhancing new ideas, providing real-world learning opportunities for students' skills and opportunities to extend and conduct new areas of research (47,48) .…”

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