Our Results
A Promising Future has a long history of development, research and innovation. The Diamond Standard was originally written in 2007 and underwent a multi-year evaluation project that was completed in 2016. The project was administered by the Health Resources Consortium (HRC), a research firm employing PhD curriculum developers and researchers in prevention work. The HRC team conducted a rigorous evaluation that included a full literature review, major revisions, survey tools for measuring curriculum outcomes, a pilot phase study of newly revised materials and a subsequent randomized control trial. This trial, completed in 2018, rendered positive results from participating teens in public and private Denver-area high schools.
This study utilized the Youth Quality of Life research instrument (YQOL-R) to measure perceptual changes in Sense of Self, Social Relationships, Culture and Community and General Quality of Life with the following findings:
- 85% of students who received at least 80% of the curriculum had significant improvement to Sense of Self and Social Relationships
- Observer findings noted that 93% of students seemed moderately or highly engaged in class
- Follow-up questions found a 68% retention rate among students
- In the three-month follow-up study, 75% of participants felt they had more control over their lives due to participation in The Diamond Standard
- Also in the three-month follow-up, 94% of participants stated that they felt that they were capable of better decision-making following The Diamond Standard
Following the HRC study, another major revision took place in 2019 that incorporated instructor and student feedback and introduced the Teacher Guide.
Our curriculum is evidence-informed, medically accurate, and upholds five of the seven competencies for the Colorado Comprehensive Health and Physical Education Standards. If you’re interested in knowing more, please refer to this page that outlines our evaluation and its findings.
Recently, a Middle School version of The Diamond Standard has been developed and has already yielded positive feedback from students regarding changes in attitude:
- Following the program, students were more likely to agree that they can overcome obstacles, that they have strengths, that they have short-term goals and are working towards these goals.
- Following the program, students were more likely to disagree with the idea that they need to act in a certain way to be accepted and more likely to agree that they can name their emotions and change their attitudes.
- Following the program, students were more likely to agree that they align their body language with what they want to say, that they listen to what the other person is saying and to disagree that they don’t hear the other person due to planning what they want to say next.
- Following the program, students were more likely to agree that conflict can be helpful, that conflict should be directed towards finding a solution that makes everyone happy, and. that they feel safe during conflict.
- Following the program, students were more likely to agree that their friends are positive influences on their lives, that they have people they can rely on, and that they know where to turn for support.
- Following the program, students showed more confidence in their ability to recognize healthy relationship traits and choose healthy relationships.
Our Logic Model
A copy of The Diamond Standard’s logic model can be found here. Our logic model outlines the goals and outcomes of our program in a systematic way through the use of hypothesized cause and effect relationships.