Measuring Perceptions of Innovation Adoption: the Diffusion of a Federal Drug Prevention Policy

The purpose of this paper is to describe the testing of a new scale to assess the perceived attributes of a federal drug prevention policy. The 17-item scale was administered to 107 Safe and Drug Free Schools (SDFS) coordinators in 12 states as a part of a larger investigation examining the diffusion of a federal drug prevention policy. In developing this scale, the authors drew from theory, previously validated measures, expert review and pre-testing with SDFS coordinators. Factor analysis revealed three underlying constructs representing relative advantage/compatibility, complexity and observability. The constructs found were internally consistent with a Cronbach's alpha ranging from a high of 0.89 for relative advantage/compatibility to a low of 0.71 for observability. Each of these constructs was correlated with a district's adoption of the policy in predictable ways. The construct of relative advantage/compatibility appears to be especially useful in assessing policy adoption. This scale was developed to assess a specific innovation; however, we believe that it can be easily adapted to understand the adoption of other health education interventions.