Why and how PROERD instructors adapt the program during its delivery: an implementation research

Abstract

Background

The Drug and Violence Resistance Educational Program (Programa Educacional de Resistência às Drogas e à Violência – PROERD) is the most widely implemented prevention program in Brazil and this study evaluated the reasons and ways in which PROERD instructors change the program, affecting its implementation fidelity.

Methods

This qualitative method study used three data sources: semi-structured interviews with 19 police officers (PROERD instructors), fidelity forms completed by the instructors, and the researcher’s observations of 30 lessons, followed by thematic analysis.

Results

Strong evidence shows that instructors adapt the program, in general, because they experienced that some activities do not work when implemented as they were created by the developers. The main reasons to adapt the program were categorized into two groups: intrinsic and extrinsic reasons. The cultural reality and school performance of students and the support and infrastructure of the school were the extrinsic reasons, and instructors’ performance was the intrinsic reason.

Conclusion

In order to make PROERD feasible for students and schools, instructors change the program in an unstructured way, often not following the curriculum. Therefore, PROERD will hardly have a positive effect for Brazilian students.

Keywords:

• Implementation fidelity
• prevention
• mixed methods
• adolescent
• school
• drugs

Acknowledgements

We thank the Military Police of the State of São Paulo, police officers, school directors, teachers, field researchers, and especially the students who participated in this study. We also thank Editage for English language editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), under Grant No. 17-22300-7 (ZMS) and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior.