Lasting Happiness: Preliminary Pilot Evaluation Summary
Lasting Happiness: Preliminary Pilot Evaluation Summary
December 2021
Erin Chaparro
Evaluation Director
Four partnering agencies participated in the initial launch of Lasting Happiness groups. A total of 20 participants and 4 facilitators worked through the Lasting Happiness workbook together over the course of 15 weeks in the Spring and Summer of 2021. All participants were recruited for participation because they had experienced a significant number of adverse childhood events.
The following groups were involved:
- Centro Latino Americano – This organization serves a LatinX community The facilitator planned to conduct a total of 15 sessions, one per week, for 1.5 hours per week, 6 individuals participated, 50% of whom completed all activities.
- New Beginnings Winter Haven Campus – This organization serves African American, LatinX, and White students. This group started and ended with 6 participants with 100% of participants submitting both their pre- and post-surveys.
- New Beginnings Lakeland Campus - This organization serves African American, LatinX, and White students. The group started and ended with 4 participants with 100% of participants submitting both their pre- and post-surveys.
- Independent group from Oregon South Coast- The group started with 4 Indigenous participants. Post-survey data has not yet been entered.
Results: On the measure of Perceived Stress (Cohen), students scored -5.62 points lower on the post-survey, indicating a large reduction in stress. The change was statistically significant at the 0.05 level (p = 0.03). The Effect Size from pre to post was 0.86 standard deviations, which is considered large.
On the measure of Satisfaction with Life (Diener), students scored 3.27 points higher (greater satisfaction) on the post-survey, which was not statistically significant from the pre-test (p = 0.22). The Effect Size was .46, which is moderate in size. Due to small sample size, statistical significance requires larger Effect Sizes. More details regarding these findings can be found at this link: Final Eval CKF_s pilot youth groups Spring 2021.pdf
