Residential location and mobility of registered sex offenders

Identifying the residential locations of registered sex offenders is a major concern for contemporary policy makers and communities. The present study seeks to identify whether registered sex offenders’ residential locations at time of arrest differ from their current addresses, if registrants move whether they tend to move to more or less socially disorganized neighborhoods, as well as what factors are associated with moving to more or less socially disorganized areas. Data are analyzed for 271 registrants on 11 measures of community social disorganization variables. Findings indicate that registrants already residing in socially disorganized areas were less likely to have a downward movement to more socially disorganized areas. Also, those who resided in less socially disorganized areas initially were more likely to have downward movement to socially disorganized areas.     

How close is close enough? Evaluating propensity score matching using data from a class size reduction experiment

In recent years, propensity score matching (PSM) has gained attention as a potential method for estimating the impact of public policy programs in the absence of experimental evaluations. In this study, we evaluate the usefulness of PSM for estimating the impact of a program change in an educational context (Tennessee's Student Teacher Achievement Ratio Project [Project STAR]). Because Tennessee's Project STAR experiment involved an effective random assignment procedure, the experimental results from this policy intervention can be used as a benchmark, to which we compare the impact estimates produced using propensity score matching methods. We use several different methods to assess these nonexperimental estimates of the impact of the program. We try to determine “how close is close enough,” putting greatest emphasis on the question: Would the nonexperimental estimate have led to the wrong decision when compared to the experimental estimate of the program? We find that propensity score methods perform poorly with respect to measuring the impact of a reduction in class size on achievement test scores. We conclude that further research is needed before policymakers rely on PSM as an evaluation tool. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management