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.     

Cross-cutting Messages and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Same-Sex Marriage Amendment

Does disagreement stimulate political participation, or discourage it? Some researchers find that exposure to cross-cutting views demobilizes voters. Selection bias in the way individuals expose themselves to disagreement and other sources of endogeneity pose challenges to causal inference. I address these concerns by using an experimental design that exogenously assigns cross-cutting or reinforcing messages. A random sample of North Carolina Democrats and Republicans received postcards summarizing either liberal or conservative opinions on a statewide same-sex marriage amendment. I find that individuals exposed to disagreement demobilize by 1.0 to 1.6 percentage points, with the majority of the combined effect attributable to a 2.0-percentage point decrease in turnout among Republicans receiving a Democratic message. I observe a similar level of demobilization when defining disagreement on the basis of predicted issue position on same-sex marriage in place of partisan affiliation. The effects are strongest among moderate supporters of traditional marriage that receive a cross-cutting treatment. The experimental design thus enables causal evidence on the nuanced interactions between political or issue position and exposure to campaign information from the opposing side.     

Mapping foreign policy behavior: An assessment and evaluation of events structures

Employing events indices for cooperation and conflict from the COPDAB data set, the graphic structuring process established by Steven Brams, and several alternative methods of quantifying the resulting event digraphs, this paper examines the utility of the graphic structuring process in efforts at explanation and prediction. Arguing that if the graphic structure represents an underlying structural order in the foreign policy behavior of states, predictability should exist between the graphic portrayal and other behavioral structures around it. Despite face validity in the sociometric qualities of the digraph results, little predictive capability was uncovered. The paper explains the testing process, disc asses the test results, and proposes alternative uses for the structural mapping procedure.     

Affect and Fairness in Economics

A strained relationship exists between mainstream economics and ethics. Over the last decade, behavioral economists have strongly argued for the importance of fairness in motivating behavior, based on substantial experimental evidence. Two main approaches to the modeling of fairness have been proposed: the outcome-based inequity aversion approach, and the intention-based reciprocity approach. Both approaches have been quite successful in explaining the experimental evidence. Nonetheless, this paper questions the role that is assigned to fairness in these models and the way fairness is incorporated, using recent experimental findings concerning emotions and fairness perceptions. The analysis supports the view that feelings are important for justice, also from a policy perspective, and pleads for closer attention being paid to the functioning of emotional brain systems.

Legitimacy in corrections

Research Summary
To extend research on legitimacy to the correctional system, we study a sample of 202 adult inmates randomly assigned to serve their 6-month sentence at one of two institutions—a traditional prison or a military-style correctional boot camp. Findings show that perceptions of justice system legitimacy changed during the course of incarceration, that the prison (but not the boot camp) proved delegitimizing, and that certain regime characteristics explained why.
Policy Implications
Across academic disciplines, studies continue to link compliance with perceived legitimacy. Compliance with the law, for instance, is related closely to the legitimacy of the justice system and its actors. These findings suggest implementing legitimacy-building policies such as procedurally fair treatment and decision making by police officers and judges. This article, by finding legitimacy to be malleable even at the final stage of the justice process, proposes the efficacy of similar policies in the correctional system. As research from England and Wales has shown, legitimizing strategies in this context could increase compliance both during and after incarceration.     

穴位埋线疗法治疗支气管哮喘的系统评价

目的 评价穴位埋线疗法治疗哮喘的临床疗效。方法 根据Cochrane系统评价方法,全面收集穴位埋线治疗哮喘的随机对照试验,运用RevMan 5.20版进行Meta分析。结果 共纳入15篇研究,纳入病例1 579例。Meta分析显示：穴位埋线与西药、针刺比较在总有效率、第一秒用力呼气量、喘息等方面可能具有优势。结论 现有证据显示穴位埋线治疗哮喘与其他疗法比较在疗效、改善预后方面有一定优势,但还需要高质量的随机对照试验进一步证实。     

中外社区警务计划与实验

自20世纪70年代后期以来,欧美及亚太地区一些国家在致力于社区警务理论研究的同时,也尝试制定社区警务计划,并开展了不同规模、不同形式的实验和交流学习,取得了某些短期效果,积累了一定经验。世纪之交,中国在继承本国治安基层基础工作优良传统和学习国外经验的基础上,也开始步入在社会主义市场经济条件下探索推行社区警务的新阶段。     

The impact of program developers as evaluators on criminal recidivism: Results from meta-analyses of experimental and quasi-experimental research

Using meta-analysis, we report on an investigation of the evaluator's influence in the treatment setting on criminal recidivism outcomes. Many evaluators and users of evaluation of social interventions worry that mixing of the roles of program developer and program evaluator may bias results reported in intervention studies in a positive direction. We first review the results of prior investigations of this issue across 50 prior meta-analyses, finding 12 that tested the impact of investigator influence in the treatment setting. Eleven of these reported that effect size increased positively, sometimes substantially so, when evaluators were influential or involved in the treatment setting. We followed this with a meta-analysis of 300 randomized field trials in individually focused crime reduction, also finding intervention studies in which evaluators who were greatly influential in the treatment setting report consistently and substantially larger effect sizes than other types of evaluators. We discuss two major views — the ‘cynical’ and ‘high fidelity’ theories — on why this is consistently the case, and conclude with a further agenda for research.     

When is a bologna sandwich better than sex? A defense of small-n case study evaluations

This paper discusses the value of quasi-experiments with small numbers of cases - small-n case studies. It argues that these evaluations of crime prevention have value. The first part of the paper shows that small-n evaluations are practical methods for producing information and that discarding this information reduces our ability to learn what works in crime prevention. The solution is to examine small-n evaluations in systematic reviews. In the second part this paper shows that more rigorous evaluations can sacrifice generalizability to gain internal validity and that this, too, reduces our ability to learn. The solution is to create a mixed portfolio of intrusive, less-intrusive, and non-intrusive evaluations. In the third part this paper shows why inference processes that make use of theory should replace naïve inductionism. One implication of this is that ignoring theory also discards evidence. Another implication is that taking theory into account when we review program effectiveness allows us to better use small-n evaluations when we generalize. In the final part, this paper gives three recommendations for making use of small-n evaluations: adopt case study procedures developed in political science, improve the value of process evaluations, and improve crime theories.