  We compute the mass spectrum of the SU(2) adjoint Higgs model in 2+1
dimensions at several points located in the (metastable) confinement region of
its phase diagram. We find a dense spectrum consisting of an almost unaltered
repetition of the glueball spectrum of the pure gauge theory, and additional
bound states of adjoint scalars. For the parameters chosen, the model
represents the effective finite temperature theory for pure SU(2) gauge theory
in four dimensions, obtained after perturbative dimensional reduction.
Comparing with the spectrum of screening masses obtained in recent simulations
of four-dimensional pure gauge theory at finite temperature, for the low lying
states we find quantitative agreement between the full and the effective theory
for temperatures as low as T = 2 Tc. This establishes the model under study as
the correct effective theory, and dimensional reduction as a viable tool for
the description of thermodynamic properties. We furthermore compare the
perturbative contribution O(g.T) with the non-perturbative contributions
O(g^2.T) and O(g^3.T) to the Debye mass. The latter turns out to be dominated
by the scale g^2.T, whereas higher order contributions are small corrections.
