National Institute on Drug Abuse RESEARCH MONOGRAPH SERIES Reviewing the Behavioral Science Knowledge Base on Technology Transfer U.S. Department of Health and Human1 Services •5 Public Health 5Service • National Institutes of Health Reviewing the Behavioral Science Knowledge Base on Technology Transfer Editors: Thomas E. Backer, Ph.D. Human Interaction Research Institute Susan L. David, M.P.H. National Institute on Drug Abuse Gerald Saucy, Ph.D. National Institute on Drug Abuse NIDA Research Monograph 155 1995 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Public Health Service National institutes of Health National Institute on Drug Abuse 5600 Fishers Lane Rockville, MD 20857 ACKNOWLEDGMENT This monograph is based on the papers from a technical review on “Reviewing the Behavioral Science Knowledge Base on Technology Transfer” held on November 17-18, 1993. The review meeting was sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. COPYRIGHT STATUS The National Institute on Drug Abuse has obtained permission from the copyright holders to reproduce certain previously published material as noted in the text. Further reproduction of this copyrighted material is permitted only as part of a reprinting of the entire publication or chapter. For any other use, the copyright holder’s permission is required. All other material in this volume except quoted passages from copyrighted sources is in the public domain and may be used or reproduced without permission from the Institute or the authors. Citation of the source is appreciated. Opinions expressed in this volume are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or official policy of the National Institute on Drug Abuse or any other part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The U.S. Government does not endorse or favor any specific commercial product or company. Trade, proprietary. or company names appearing in this publication are used only because they are considered essential in the context of the studies reported herein. National Institute on Drug Abuse NIH Publication No. 95-4035 Printed 1995 NIDA Research Monographs are indexed in the Index Medicus. They are selectively included in the coverage of American Statistics Index, BioSciences Information Service, Chemical Abstracts, Current Contents, Psychological Abstracts, and Psychopharmacology Abstracts. ii Contents Introduction . 1 Thomas E. Backer, Susan L. David, and Gerald Saucy Assessing and Enhancing Readiness for Change: Implications for Technology Transfer . 21 Thomas E. Backer Collaboration and Diversity in Technology Transfer . 42 Kathryn H. Kavanagh Risk Communication: A Tool for Behavior Change . 65 David B. McCallum Diffusion of Drug Abuse Prevention Programs: Spontaneous Diffusion, Agenda Setting, and Reinvention . 90 Everett M. Rogers Interorganizational Planning and Coordination as Technology Transfer: Lessons From a Case Study . 106 Howell S. Baum Organizational Change as Human Process, Not Technique . 119 Michael A. Diamond Rethinking Organization Stability as a Determinant for Innovation Adoption and Diffusion . 132 Alan M. Glassman Technology Transfer as Collaborative Learning . 147 Ramkrishnan V. Tenkasi and Susan A. Mohrman Reducing Impediments to Technology Transfer in Drug Abuse Programming . 169 Barry S. Brown A Field-Based Dissemination Component in a Drug Abuse Research Center . 186 James L. Sorensen and Wayne W. Clark iii Technology Transfer in the Criminal Justice Field: Implications for Substance Abuse . 198 Paul Gendreau Creating Strong Attitudes: Two Routes to Persuasion . 209 Richard E. Petty Transferring Research Findings on Persuasion to Improve Drug Abuse Prevention Programs . 225 William J. McGuire Developing Effective Behavior Change Interventions: Some Lessons Learned from Behavioral Research . 246 Martin Fishbein Synthesis of Behavioral Science Learnings About Technology Transfer . 262 Thomas E. Backer and Susan L. David iv Introduction Thomas E. Backer, Susan L. David, and Gerald Soucy Knowledge is of little use when confined to mere speculation” But when speculative truths are reduced to practice, when theories, grounded upon experiments, are applied to common purposes of life . knowledge then becomes really useful. Preface, Transactions: The Journal of the American Philosophical Society (1771) THE CHALLENGE OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER While there are currently many gaps in basic knowledge about drug abuse treatment and prevention (and about human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) related to substance use), there also are important gaps between the knowledge gained from research or community-based demonstrations and everyday practice in the field by individual practitioners, treatment and prevention programs, and communities. Getting access to the right information at the right time for the right purpose is often difficult. This is sometimes due to limited dissemination of research findings or new practices and sometimes to too much information, with no way to efficiently sort out what is relevant to meeting a particular need in the field. Faced with either prospect, practitioners, service institutions, and communities often choose to continue current practice. But the difficulty does not end there. Even with relevant new knowledge, actually implementing a new program or practice is difficult and may take a long time. Potential users of drug abuse treatment or prevention innovations must overcome a host of financial, psychological, and organizational challenges to have new technologies implemented in their settings. Traditionally, efforts to close the gap between knowledge and practice have focused on education, training, and dissemination of information through conferences, journal articles, and reports or brochures. These activities typically are directed at researchers and academics, the 1 developers of such knowledge. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which has central responsibility within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for generating new knowledge regarding drug abuse and related HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, has a long history of research dissemination activities. NIDA has enjoyed considerable success in this area during its 20 years of preclinical, clinical, and community-based drug abuse research. However, while valuable, such dissemination-focused activities by themselves usually fall far short of producing the individual and systemic change that state-of-the-art knowledge makes possible. For the maximum chance of success in promoting improvement in drug abuse treatment or prevention practice, technology transfer activities must: (1) gather certain types of information in addition to knowledge about the technical aspects of an innovation, (2) do the gathering in ways that address certain characteristics of potential users of innovations and their environments, and (3) provide assistance to potential users in addition to simply making the new knowledge available. The concept underlying these principles is that improvement in drug abuse treatment and prevention practices involves a human process which, if successful, leads to individual and organizational change. Gaps between knowledge and action in the adoption of worthwhile innovations occur for reasons quite similar to those that make it difficult to change individual behavior related to substance abuse and other types of health-related behavior. Incentives to change, resistance to change, and many other human factors significantly influence the outcome of efforts to change behavior. This is true whether the behavior is avoidance of street drugs by a teenager or adoption of a new prevention technology by a community-based program. This more comprehensive approach to technology transfer is driven by a set of empirically derived principles coming from several disciplines, including behavioral science. Behavioral Science Knowledge and the Objective of the Technical Review Over the last 70 years, a significant behavioral science knowledge base has developed about how to facilitate individual and organizational behavior change. This knowledge base has great relevance to technology transfer. But academic researchers in social and clinical psychology, and in related fields such as management sciences and communications, seldom have the chance to share this knowledge base with individuals 2 and agencies developing technology transfer programs designed to reach individual practitioners, service organizations, and communities. NIDA convened a technical review meeting on November 17 and 18, 1993, in Washington, DC, to review and synthesize this behavioral science knowledge base. The technical review focused on four major topical areas: • Communications-based behavior change, • Organizational behavior change, • Behavior change in substance abuse agencies and practitioners, and • Individual and interpersonal behavior change. Fourteen senior researchers in behavioral science prepared papers for presentation at this conference, and the final versions of their papers are contained in this monograph. The table of contents lists these researchers and the topics they addressed. A synthesis at the end of this monograph reviews the major concepts, principles, and issues derived from their papers, with implications for the future evolution and evaluation of NIDA’s Technology Transfer Program. The Knowledge Base On Technology Transfer Comprehensive analyses of the literature on technology transfer (currently estimated to contain more than 10,000 citations;