Authors will present the history of the evaluation project established between university-based evaluators and community-based abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. This presentation will focus on the original English-based questionnaire and translation of the survey to Spanish for broader dissemination.
Since 1998, Title V monies have been distributed to promote abstinence-only-until-marriage. Since year 2000, evaluators in Texas have conducted a process-focused evaluation, including collecting survey data from participant youth. The survey was designed to measure program impact. To date, the survey has been disseminated over a 3-year time span and the concept of this evaluation has spread to other abstinence-only-until-marriage programs and states.
The evaluation team has learned about intricacies of school-based data collection and the value of building upon existing community relationships. Once the concept of evaluation spread to different areas of the US, some of the "new" perspectives of the evaluation partnership included the need to translate the original questionnaire, developed in English by the evaluation team at Texas A&M University, to Spanish.
The evaluation team knew that the translation techniques would be a daunting task; however, they wanted to design a survey that would involve as many communities as possible. This presentation focuses on three dimensions of translation problems: semantic equivalence, conceptual equivalence and normative equivalence.
Given the lack of scientifically valid evaluations of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, it is important to disseminate true evaluation efforts to as many communities as possible. One area lacking in efforts, is Spanish speaking communities. Researchers will discuss their experiences in translating an abstinence-based survey to Spanish.