Several federal agencies are collaborating to sponsor a Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative, which currently involves 54 communities (over 100 school districts) across the U.S. Over a three-year period, the Initiative will help school districts and other agencies in these communities implement new or enhance existing efforts in six domains: school safety, substance abuse and violence prevention, mental health services, early childhood psychosocial development, education reform, and safe school policies. The population targeted and diversity of the services to be provided create a number of challenges for the national evaluation. The Research Triangle Institute (RTI) has contracted with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to conduct a national cross-site evaluation of this Initiative over the next five years. The national evaluation will feature core process and outcome data elements collected in all 54 communities. Injury-related outcome data will be collected from a variety of sources, including students, teachers, schools, and health and law enforcement agencies. Comparison data will be collected from one or two nationally representative samples of school districts that are currently participating in surveys conducted by RTI, and from national data sources including the Monitoring the Future Study and the National Center for Juvenile Justice. In addition to comparisons with external data, we will attempt to identify clusters of Initiative communities for internal comparisons. Issues to be discussed include the difficulty of developing an evaluation design that is sensitive to program variation, and the attribution of any effects observed to the grantees’ activities.
Learning Objectives: Session participants will become familiar with: (1) the administrative structure and programmatic aspects the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative; (2) key features of the national cross-site evaluation design; and (3) conceptual and methodological issues and challenges confronted by the national evaluation team
Keywords: Violence Prevention, Children and Adolescents
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.