Campus Location

Abilene Campus (Residential)

Date of Award

Spring 5-2019

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Social Work

Degree Name

Master of Science

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Dr. Kyeonghee Jang

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Rachel Slaymaker, LMSW

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Monica Reid, M.A. LPC-S

Abstract

The state of Texas ranks number two in the nation for the highest volume of human trafficking, at an estimated 313,000 victims in the state. As awareness of this issue in both Texas and the United States increases, efforts to educate communities, advocate for new policies, and provide services to survivors are on the rise. One strategy utilized by organizations, agencies, and individuals across Texas serving survivors of human trafficking is the use of coalitions. Limited research addresses coalition sustainability within the context of issues outside healthcare initiatives facing communities, including human trafficking. Due to the limited research surrounding community coalitions and their sustainability, this research study aims to examine coalition sustainability factors in Texas human trafficking coalitions through the lens of the Community Coalition Action Theory. The present study is a cross-sectional, exploratory study of coalition sustainability in Texas based human trafficking coalitions. The Coalition Effectiveness Inventory is a diagnostic tool emailed to the points of contact for the 17 human trafficking coalitions in Texas to evaluate coalition effectiveness. Descriptive statistics for each of the five coalition sustainability factors (lead agency effectiveness, staff and leadership effectiveness, membership engagement effectiveness, formalized coalition structures, and formalized coalition sustainability) were utilized to develop composite scores. Utilizing single and multiple linear regressions, four factors were statistically significant when the other factors were not taken into account. While significant limitations are present within this study, particularly the small sample size, implications for Texas based human trafficking coalitions were provided to address areas in need of improvement to increase overall sustainability.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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