Do experimental and nonexperimental evaluations give different answers about the effectiveness of government‐funded training programs?

This paper uses meta‐analysis to investigate whether random assignment (or experimental) evaluations of voluntary government‐funded training programs for the disadvantaged have produced different conclusions than nonexperimental evaluations. Information includes several hundred estimates from 31 evaluations of 15 programs that operated between 1964 and 1998. The results suggest that experimental and nonexperimental evaluations yield similar conclusions about the effectiveness of training programs, but that estimates of average effects for youth and possibly men might have been larger in experimental studies. The results also suggest that variation among nonexprimental estimates of program effects is similar to variation among experimental estimates for men and youth, but not for women (for whom it seems to be larger), although small sample sizes make the estimated differences somewhat imprecise for all three groups. The policy implications of the findings are discussed. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Using diaries to promote procedural justice in performance appraisals

One-hundred-seventeen college students performed a task on which they received a negative, neutral, or positive performance evaluation. The evaluations were made by the experimenter who (i) kept a diary documenting subjects' performance, (ii) observed their performance but did not keep a diary, or (iii) made the evaluation on no apparent basis (control). It was found that both the evaluation procedure and the evaluation outcome itself were perceived as being fairer when diaries were used as the basis for making evaluations relative to either subjects in the observation procedure group or the control group. The practical implications of these findings for performance appraisals are considered along with the implications for conceptual work on procedural justice.     

Research utilization in policymaking: A tale of two series (of social experiments)

This paper is an exploratory attempt to view the role that social experiments in general, and the income maintenance experiments and work/welfare demonstrations in particular, have played in the policy process through the lens provided by the knowledge utilization literature. In addition to suggesting that the decision to conduct a social experiment is rarely, if ever, made according to an essentially rational paradigm, this framework helps highlight the range of uses to which findings from social experiments can be put and the circumstances under which various types of uses are more or less likely. Specifically, the knowledge utilization literature suggests that rather than having the dramatic, decisive effects on policy choices that their promoters have often envisioned, social experiments are more likely to affect policy in a variety of subtle ways.     

Relationship between type of trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder among urban children and adolescents

This study examines the association between trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among 157 help-seeking children (aged 8-17). Structured clinical interviews are carried out, and linear and logistic regression analyses are conducted to examine the relationship between PTSD and type of trauma exposure controlling for age, gender, and ethnicity. Confrontation with traumatic news, witnessing domestic violence, physical abuse, and sexual abuse are each significantly associated with PTSD. Witnessing a crime, being the victim of a crime, and exposure to accidents, fire, or disaster are not associated with PTSD. These findings underscore the association between interpersonal violence and childhood PTSD.     

Validation of a short aggression inventory for law enforcement

This study cross-validates a short aggression inventory using a sample of 250 law enforcement professionals. The instrument under investigation is the 12-question modified version of the Buss-Perry Aggression Scale (Buss & Perry, 1992). Statistical and external validation methods were used to ascertain the appropriateness of this scale's use with law enforcement professionals. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that both the firstorder, four-factor model, {ie12-1}, GFI=.94, NFI=.84, NNFI=.88, and CFI=.91, and the second-order model with a single, global Aggression “super” factor, {ie12-2}, GFI=.94, NFI=.84, NNFI=.89, and CFI=.91, provided a reasonable goodness-of-fit to the data. Subscales of this instrument correlated meaningfully with departmental measures of citizen complaints for physical and verbal aggression by officers, as well as the number of shooting incidents in which the officers were involved. The need for a short measure of aggression is discussed and applications in law enforcement are offered.     

The Doolittle commission of 1954

Many scholars and other writers have dismissed the 1954 Doolittle Commission as an Eisenhower administration tactic to protect CIA covert operations from congressional investigation. Evidence about the commission and its report, however, suggests that this view may be incomplete. Clarification of the commission's precise purpose may serve the wider study of US covert action policy in the 1950s and congressional oversight of the CIA. In particular, the report's recommendations for bold covert action abroad may reveal how administration covert action policy attracted congressional attention to the CIA.     

Brownfield redevelopment and affordable housing: A case study of New Jersey

Abstract

A total of 779 New Jersey residents were surveyed to determine the number of people who during the next five years would be willing to move to housing built on brownfield sites that have been remediated to the extent that they pose no plausible brownfield‐related health risk to residents.

Fourteen percent of the respondents said they would be willing to move to and live in housing built on cleaned‐up brownfields. These respondents were disproportionately relatively poor and young and resided in apartments and cities, especially cities where the city government was actively promoting brownfields. These respondents also did not like their current neighborhoods, did not feel threatened by the idea of living on a cleaned‐up brownfield site, and trusted experts to advise them on the health risks involved.     

Developmental Change in Adolescent Delinquency: Modeling Time-Varying Effects of a Preventative Intervention and GABRA2 Halpotype Linked to Alcohol Use

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Better integrating human developmental factors in genomic research is part of a set of next steps for testing gene-by-environment interaction hypotheses. This...     

The dissemination and utilization of welfare‐to‐work experiments in state policymaking

Abstract This paper reports the results of a telephone survey of state‐level officials as to the influence of evaluations of three state welfare innovations: California's GAIN, New York's CAP, and Florida's Project Independence. The three experiments were known to those interviewed, yet they did not have dramatic, decisive effects on policymaking. However, GAIN and CAP appear to have influenced policymaking in less dramatic and more subtle respects. Much more important than empirical findings about the effects of tested programs was information about how these programs actually operated in the field along with evidence that the policies tested in welfare‐to‐work experiments were logically consistent (that is, there was no obvious reason to think that they would be unsuccessful), could clear federal waivers, and would not encounter major political resistance. © 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.