Association between inter-organizational consensus on use of research evidence and stage of implementation of an evidence-based practice

Methods Information on research evidence acquisition, evaluation and application were collected from 140 directors and senior administrators of child welfare, mental health and juvenile justice systems in 40 California and 11 Ohio counties participating in an RCT of the use of community development teams to scale up implementation of Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care over a 3 year period (2010-12). Individual data were grouped into 44 clusters, defined as 3 or more participants from 2 or more organizations in a county in a specific year. We used two separate methods for calculating consensus, cultural consensus analysis [1] of responses to the Structured Interview of Evidence Use [2], and SEM of average SIEU scale and subscale scores [3,4]. Mixed effects models were used to estimate associations between individual and group measures of URE and Stage of Implementation Completion [5] scores.