Coalitions for a common purpose: managing relationships in experiments

Objectives

To discuss the character of relationships between operational and research staff and the necessary conditions for successful experiments.

Methods

A review of research and experience in the conduct of experiments, especially randomized controlled trials, examining the foundations for success, issues in maintaining cooperation with operational staff, implementation and leadership issues.

Results

The fundamental issue in successful experiments is the relationship between the operational and research entities, which most often resemble a coalition of temporary common interests rather than a partnership between parties with long-term common goals.

Conclusion

Experiments require close cooperation between the parties because of the need for maintenance and monitoring. Researchers who use field trials have solved many of the common problems faced by those embarking on experiments and those who do so will be rewarded by the quality of their findings. Relationships which may be characterised as temporary coalitions for a common purpose may, under the right conditions, ultimately mature into true research partnerships.     

Short-term effects of restorative justice conferences on post-traumatic stress symptoms among robbery and burglary victims: a randomized controlled trial

Objectives

To examine the impact of face-to-face restorative justice conference (RJC) meetings led by police officers between crime victims and their offenders on victims’ post-traumatic stress symptoms.

Methods

Two trials conducted in London randomly assigned burglary or robbery cases with consenting victims and offenders to either a face-to-face restorative justice conference (RJC) in addition to conventional justice treatment or conventional treatment without a RJC. Post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) were measured with the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) within 1 month of treatment for 192 victims. We assessed the prevalence and severity of PTSS scores following treatment, using independent sample t tests and chi square statistics. We further measured the magnitude of the differences between the groups, using effect size analyses.

Results

Analyses show that PTSS scores are significantly lower among victims assigned to RJC in addition to criminal justice processing through the courts than to customary criminal justice processing alone. There are overall 49 % fewer victims with clinical levels of PTSS, and possible PTSD (IES-R?≥?25). Main treatment effects are significant (t?=?2.069; p?Conclusions Findings suggest that restorative justice conferences reduce clinical levels of PTSS and possibly PTSD in a short-term follow-up assessment. Future research should include longer follow-up, larger and more stratified samples, and financial data to account for the cost benefit implications of RJ conferences compared to ordinary PTSS treatments.     

Treatment and Intervention for Opiate Dependence in the United Kingdom: Lessons from Triumph and Failure

The history of opiate treatment in the United Kingdom (UK) since the early 1980s is a rich source of learning about the benefits and pitfalls of drug treatment policy. We present five possible lessons to be learnt about how factors outside the clinic, including government, charities and researchers can influence treatment and outcomes. First, do not let a crisis go to waste. The philosophical shift from abstinence to harm reduction in the 1980s, in response to an HIV outbreak in injecting users, facilitated expansion in addiction services and made a harm reduction approach more acceptable. Second, studies of drug-related deaths can lead to advances in care. By elucidating the pattern of mortality, and designing interventions to address the causes, researchers have improved patient safety in certain contexts, though significant investment in Scotland has not arrested rising mortality. Third, collection of longitudinal data and its use to inform clinical guidelines, as pursued from the mid-1990s, can form an enduring evidence base and shape policy, sometimes in unintended ways. Fourth, beware of the presentation of harm reduction and recovery as in conflict. At the least, this reduces patient choice, and at worst, it has caused some services to be redesigned in a manner that jeopardises patient safety. Fifth, the relationship between the third and state sectors must be carefully nurtured. In the UK, early collaboration has been replaced by competition, driven by changes in funding, to the detriment of service provision.     

External validity and assignment of experimental vs. control treatment providers within small work groups: a research note

Journal of Experimental Criminology - When offenders or victims are randomly assigned to receive experimental vs. current treatments, the external validity of results may depend on whether...     

Testing for Analysts’ Bias in Crime Prevention Experiments: Can We Accept Eisner’s One-tailed Test?

Eisner (Journal of Experimental Criminology, this issue, 2009) suggests that developer-led evaluations often make programs look better than independent evaluations do because the former suffer systematic biases in favor of prevention success. Yet, his proposed remedies suffer their own systematic bias, constituting a ‘one-tailed’ test of bias in only one direction. In this response we suggest that a more objective assessment of ‘analysts’ effects’ requires a ‘two-tailed’ test of bias, in which reviewers would measure indications of bias both for and against success in evaluations reported by both developers and independent evaluators. After exploring the full complexity of the distinction between developers and evaluators, we report on one case in which independent evaluations were more favorable than those of developers. We then suggest possible indicators of analysts’ biases against finding success that may characterize the work of developers who “bend over backwards” to find harm in their programs, and of independent evaluators who may seek to “get a scalp” of a developer or a program.