Organizational and Coalition Strategies for Youth Violence Prevention: A Longitudinal Mixed-Methods Study

This longitudinal study identifies espoused change orientations and actual youth violence prevention (YVP) practices over five years by 99 public and nonprofit organizations in one city. Annual key informant interviews provided both qualitative and quantitative data, including organizational collaborative network data. Data were also obtained on participation in a citywide YVP coalition, juvenile arrests and court referrals. On average, organizations both in and outside the coalition adopted a problem-focused as often as a strengths-based change orientation, and were only marginally more oriented toward empowering community members than professionals and changing communities than individual youth. Most surprisingly, YVP coalition members adopted more of a tertiary (reactive/rehabilitative) than primary prevention orientation compared to nonmembers. The number of different YVP strategies implemented increased over five years from mainly positive youth development and education interventions to those strategies plus mentoring, youth activities, events and programs, and counseling youth. Network analysis reveals dense initial collaboration with no critical gatekeepers and coalition participants more central to the city-wide organizational network. Coalition participation and total network collaboration declined in Years 3-5. Youth violence arrests and court referrals also declined. The coalition was marginally involved in successful community-collaborative, school-based interventions and other strategies adopted, and it disbanded a year after federal funding ended. Despite, or possibly due to, both national and local government participation, the coalition missed opportunities to engage in collective advocacy for local YVP policy changes. Coalitions should help nonprofit and public organizations develop more effective change orientations and implement commensurate strategies at the community level.