When random assignment fails: Some lessons from the Minneapolis Spouse Abuse Experiment

In this paper, we consider what may be done when researchers anticipate that in the implementation of field experiments, random assignment to experimental and control groups is likely to be flawed. We then reanalyze data from the Minneapolis Spouse Abuse Experiment in a manner that explicitly models violations of random assignment. As anticipated, we find far larger treatment effects than previously reported. The techniques developed should be useful in a wide variety of settings when random assignment is implemented imperfectly.     

Random assignment without tears: how to stop worrying and love the Cambridge randomizer

Objectives  

This note describes a low-cost online portal called “the Cambridge Randomizer”, which enables treatment providers to conduct random assignment themselves, while the researcher still maintains control over the entire process and the integrity of the allocation process.     

Retrieving administrative data to assess long-term outcomes: a case study of the 23-year follow-up of the Milwaukee domestic violence experiment

Objectives

To describe how social scientists, criminal justice practitioners, and administrative agencies collected administrative data to follow-up a criminological experiment after two decades. To make recommendations that will guide similar long-term follow-ups.

Methods

A case study approach describes the processes of and sociological benefits to collecting administrative data to assess criminal justice and life-course outcomes.

Results

While maintaining experimental integrity, we developed, executed, and verified processes to retrieve arrest, mortality, and residential data for the experimental subjects, which enabled us to complete the longest ever follow-up of a criminal justice experiment.

Conclusions

When experiments have policy implications, administrative data may be preferable to survey data for assessing primary effects. Successful social science research can be conducted in conjunction with multiple administrative agencies.

     

Policing Domestic Violence 1967–2017

The U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice under President Johnson in 1967 called for a program of research that would support evidence‐based tracking, targeting, and testing of policing domestic “disputes.” During the past 50 years, the amount of research on domestic violence has grown. The findings from targeting studies reveal a steep pyramid from many low‐harm cases at the base rising to a tiny fraction that are lethal. The findings from testing studies reveal that arrests reduce reoffending among employed persons in the short run while increasing recidivism among unemployed suspects. Arrests in one experiment increased all‐cause mortality of victims over 23 years. The findings from tracking research reveal wide variance across police agencies in implementing mandatory arrest. Since the Crime Commission, however, mandatory arrest laws were also enacted in 28 states in the 1980s, with uneven enforcement for misdemeanor domestic abuse. New research is needed to test the effectiveness of other domestic violence interventions, including restorative justice, as well as follow‐up studies of previous research sites.