Two instruments derived from the field of social ecology—the Ward Atmosphere Scale (WAS) and the Community Oriented Programs Environment Scale (COPES)—were employed in the present project as “self-evaluation” tools. Assessing inpatient and day treatment “social climates,” the WAS and COPES are presented in this paper as linking process and outcome measures in mental health program evaluation. The project focused on patient-staff discrepancies in environmental perceptions as guiding and catalyzing programmatic changes. That these brief scales do not require highly trained evaluators makes them highly suited for incorporation into routine program evaluation.
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