Generating and using evidence to guide public policy and practice: Lessons from the Campbell Test-bed Project

This paper offers lessons from a three-year Test-bed project that tested systematic review practices developed by the Campbell Collaboration and the Cochrane Collaboration. Under the Test-bed project 14 systematic reviews were completed of interventions in crime prevention, social welfare, and education. (References to the products of these test-bed reviews are included in the reference list, preceded by an asterisk). Building on this experience, the authors recommend structuring future reviews around well-defined review topics more explicitly focused on particular interventions, and constraining literature search to evaluations of relevant interventions. Reviewers should analyze and report findings from RCTs separately from non-RCT studies and report on impact estimates in natural units, instead of relying solely on effect size metrics. Further, reviewers should report intent-to-treat estimates as the causally valid outcomes from RCTs. Analyses of impacts for treated sub-groups should be reported as non-experimental findings. More attention should be given to the minimum detectable effect a study can support, as well as any information on the possible costs and benefits of the intervention. Pooling results from studies of disparate interventions, populations, and contexts is not recommended. Meta-analysis should be reserved for homogeneous clusters of interventions studies. Forest plots are helpful for presenting study findings and confidence limits. However, simple bar charts preserve important information on the base levels for the outcomes. Finally reviewers should define a priori the minimum data set or required elements that allow study inclusion, and use this information systematically in making decisions about what evidence to admit into the review.     

A policy maker's guide to controlling delinquency and crime through family interventions

For the past two decades, the trend in juvenile justice has been toward more punitive policies and laws. Implicit in these policies is a belief that children are cognizant of and wholly responsible for their behaviors, and therefore deserve the punitive responses they receive. The actions of people and institutions who surround children, however, play vital roles in their development. Therefore families appear to be a crucial, potentially productive point of intervention at which to reduce the likelihood of delinquency. This paper explores the relationship of family life to delinquency and derives five policy strategies to reduce delinquency: 1) prenatal and early childhood health care, 2) early intervention, 3) comprehensive family policy, 4) family treatment for troubled youths, and 5) parent training.     

Qualitative analysis: a guide to best practice--forensic science extension.

Qualitative analysis is arguably the cornerstone of analysis since what cannot be recognised cannot be quantified. This is especially true in the case of the forensic sciences where, for example, the mere presence of a prohibited, or controlled, substance in an unauthorized setting is indicative of a potential offence. This paper presents a set of principles of good practice in qualitative analysis. The principles are placed in the context of forensic science and extend earlier published guidance.