Improving evaluation of anti-crime programs: Summary of a National Research Council report★

This article summarizes a report of the National Research Council: Improving Evaluation of Anti-crime Programs. It is based on a workshop, held in September 2003, in which participants presented and discussed examples of evaluation-related studies that represent the methods and challenges associated with research at three levels: interventions directed toward individuals; interventions in neighborhoods, schools, prisons, or communities; and interventions at a broad policy level. The article, and the report on which it is based, is organized around five questions that require thoughtful analysis in the development of any evaluation plan: What questions should the evaluation address? When is it appropriate to conduct an impact evaluation? How should an impact evaluation be designed? How should the evaluation be implemented? What organizational infrastructure and procedures support high quality evaluation? The authors highlight major considerations in developing and implementing evaluation plans for criminal justice programs and make recommendations for improvement of government funded evaluation studies.     

Party factions and coalition government: portfolio allocation in Italian Christian Democracy

In this paper I elaborate a recently advanced argument about government formation, and assess it by studying the factions of the Italian Christian Democratic Party (DC). I contend that the costs of making and breaking coalitions depend on political institutions and on the configuration of actors in policy space. Comparisons across parties in Italy and other countries support this argument. So also do comparisons across party factions. The Christian Democratic factions that incurred the lowest office costs to build coalitions were those at or near the left–right median in Italy's core party. When electoral rules were rewritten in the DC, internal party competition over portfolio allocation changed as well. The paper's conclusion outlines how the argument would guide further research on party factions.     

Parental influence on adolescent sexuality: Implications for parents as educators

While parents may not be recognized as disseminators of sexual information, positive and negative sexual messages are communicated by parents to their children, both verbally and nonverbally. The results of this study indicate that the impact of parental messages upon the sexuality of youth appears relatively straightforward for males, but quite complex for females. This article suggests educational approaches that can be used to recycle early parental sexual messages.This study was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, #HD 10689-02. David J. Kallen, Department of Pediatrics/Human Development, College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University was the principal investigator.Received Ph.D. from Michigan State University. Current research interest is Human sexuality.Received Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. Current research interest is Relationships.     

Weekly community interviews with high-risk participants: operational issues

To address several key questions in social science research, repeated interviews of individuals drawn from difficult populations are required. This article describes an approach for addressing the challenges associated with longitudinal interview studies, including locating research participants, obtaining reliable and valid interview data over time, and retaining participants across the course of the study. We applied this approach to conduct a study designed to identify changeable risk factors for violence among high-risk people with mental illness. To successfully conduct weekly interviews of these individuals in the community across a 6-month period, we developed a flexible and personalized interview format; carefully selected, trained, and supervised staff; and developed incentives to maximize participant retention. Each of these three steps is discussed as a guide for future longitudinal studies that involve interviewing difficult populations.     

The Advent of Internet Surveys for Political Research: A Comparison of Telephone and Internet Samples

The Internet offers a number of advantages as a survey mode:low marginal cost per completed response, capabilities for providingrespondents with large quantities of information, speed, andelimination of interviewer bias. Those seeking these advantagesconfront the problem of representativeness both in terms ofcoverage of the population and capabilities for drawing randomsamples. Two major strategies have been pursued commerciallyto develop the Internet as a survey mode. One strategy, usedby Harris Interactive, involves assembling a large panel ofwilling respondents who can be sampled. Another strategy, usedby Knowledge Networks, involves using random digit dialing (RDD)telephone methods to recruit households to a panel of Web-TVenabled respondents. Do these panels adequately deal with theproblem of representativeness to be useful in political scienceresearch? The authors address this question with results fromparallel surveys on global climate change and the Kyoto Protocoladministered by telephone to a national probability sample andby Internet to samples of the Harris Interactive and KnowledgeNetworks panels. Knowledge and opinion questions generally showstatistically significant but substantively modest differenceacross the modes. With inclusion of standard demographic controls,typical relational models of interest to political scientistsproduce similar estimates of parameters across modes. It thusappears that, with appropriate weighting, samples from thesepanels are sufficiently representative of the U.S. populationto be reasonable alternatives in many applications to samplesgathered through RDD telephone surveys.