Methodological quality and the evaluation of anti-crime programs

Abstract

The National Research Council (NRC) report is an excellent contribution to knowledge. The main issues arising are: (1) Evaluability: will consideration of this topic mean that few programs are evaluated? (2) Methodological quality: a new scale needs to be developed and used. (3) Effect size: a realistic, easily understandable measure should be used. (4) Benefit:cost ratio: more calculations of this are needed. (5) Observational methods: their usefulness in evaluation compared with experimental and quasi-experimental methods is doubtful in most cases. (6) Attrition: research is needed on how to minimize this. (7) Evaluating area-based programs: more research is needed on how to do this. (8) Theories: theories and programs should inform each other. (9) Generalizability: research is needed on how to achieve this from small-scale demonstration projects to large-scale routine application. (10) Descriptive validity: a checklist of items to be included in research reports should be specified. Some other issues include the need to calculate statistical power, the need for research on case flow problems, the difficulty of identifying the active ingredients of a program, the problem of obtaining access to official data, the desirability of collecting victim survey and self-report data, conflict of interest issues, and the need for more systematic reviews.