Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research

by Ward; Sally K.

• ISBN13: 9780789011848
• ISBN10: 0789011840
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-20
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Understand and evaluate family violence programs for your community! Twenty years ago, the major issue in creating interventions to prevent domestic violence was persuading the courts, the funding agencies, and society that domestic violence was a serious problem worthy of time, trouble, and money. Now that the importance of domestic violence has been established, we need safe and effective ways to evaluate those interventions to see which ones are working and how they can be improved. Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research brings together some of the best minds in the field discussing such vital evaluation issues as policy implications, alternative designs for evaluation studies, and ethical concerns. This comprehensive book approaches the vexed question of evaluation with compassion as well as scientific rigor. Clearly, traditional double-blind studies and control groups are difficult to conduct when family violence is the subject; it is ethically indefensible to sit back and watch abusers hurt their mates or children when interventions are available. Yet finding usable methods of program evaluation is also essential. Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research confronts these questions and discusses practical ways to evaluate a variety of domestic violence programs. Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research draws on years of experience to address the difficult questions raised, including: going beyond evaluating program effectiveness to analyze why and how interventions help change behavior creating new research designs to adapt to the unique concerns of the family violence field using meta-analysis for program evaluation research determining the interaction between research and program results identifying barriers between community activists and social scientists that may impede research Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research offers fresh and creative ways to do program evaluations, guarantee subjects'physical and emotional safety, and make good science humane.

Table of Contents

About the Contributors	xiii
INTRODUCTION
Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research	1	(6)
Sally K. Ward
David Finkelhor
OVERVIEWS OF RESEARCH ON FAMILY VIOLENCE INTERVENTIONS
How Evaluation Research Can Help Reform and Improve the Child Welfare System	7	(22)
Richard J. Gelles
Assessing Family Violence Interventions: Linking Programs to Research-Based Strategies	29	(26)
Rosemary Chalk
Research Synthesis in Family Violence: The Art of Reviewing Research	55	(28)
David B. Sugarman
Sue Boney-McCoy
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN AND ALTERNATIVES
What Are the Lessons of the Police Arrest Studies?	83	(32)
Joel H. Garner
Christopher D. Maxwell
Linking Research to Practice: Challenges and Opportunities	115	(24)
Deborah Daro
OUTCOMES RESEARCH
Treatment Research in Child Maltreatment: Clinical and Research Directions	139	(26)
David Kolko
Canadian Child Welfare Outcomes Indicator Matrix: An Ecological Approach to Tracking Service Outcomes	165	(26)
Nico Trocme
Bruce MacLaurin
Barbara Fallon
EVALUATING INTERVENTIONS IN SPECIFIC INSTITUTIONAL SETTINGS
Evaluating Interventions for Children Exposed to Family Violence	191	(26)
Sandra A. Graham-Bermann
Strategies for Evaluating Dating Violence Prevention Programs	217	(22)
Anna-Lee Pittman
David A. Wolfe
Christine Wekerle
COLLABORATION AND ACTIVIST ISSUES
Community Collaboration to Develop Research Programs in Partner Violence	239	(34)
L. Kevin Hamberger
Bruce Ambuel
ETHICAL ISSUES IN EVALUATING INTERVENTIONS
Human Subject Issues in Batterer Program Evaluation	273	(26)
Edward W. Gondolf
Index	299