SAGE Journal & Encyclopedia Articles

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Schuck, A.M. (2013). 'A life-course perspective on adolescents’ attitudes to police: DARE, delinquency, and residential segregation. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 50(4). 579-607.

Objectives: Describe the developmental trajectory of perceptions of the police by youth as they transition from adolescence to young adulthood.

Method: A longitudinal experiment to evaluate the impact of the D.A.R.E. program (N= 1,773). Latent variable growth modeling was used.

Results: A dramatic decline in the favorable attitudes of youth toward the police begins in about seventh grade. More negative perceptions of police are associated with minority racial status, negative experiences with officers, involvement in the delinquent subculture, and greater expressions of skewed legal norms. There is a long-term positive effect of D.A.R.E. on attitudes toward the police, particularly for African American youth.

Conclusion: The study highlights the importance of theorizing about perceptions of the police from a life course perspective. Findings raise new policy questions about the long-term impact of school-based programs, such as D.A.R.E., and the role of multiple reference groups in the formation of minorities’ attitudes. More research is needed to gain a better understanding of the cognitive and experiential processes involved in attitude formation.

Molnar, A., Smith, P., Zahorik, J., Palmer, A., Halback, A., and Ehrle, K. (1999). Evaluating the SAGE program: A pilot in targeted pupil-teacher reduction in Wisconsin. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 21(2). 465-177.
Wisconsin's Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program was designed as a 5-year K–3 pilot project that began in the 1996–97 school year. The program requires that participating schools implement 4 interventions including reducing the pupil-teacher ratio within classrooms to 15 students per teacher. The SAGE evaluation uses a quasi-experimental, comparative change design utilizing descriptive statistics, linear regression, and hierarchical linear modeling. In addition, qualitative analyses of life in SAGE schools and classrooms are conducted. Results of the 1996–97 and 1997–98 first grade data reveal findings consistent with the Tennessee STAR class size experiment. Also, individualization emerged as a key characteristic of instruction in SAGE classrooms.

Liket, K.C., Rey-Garcia, M., and Maas, K.E. (2014). Why aren’t evaluations working and what to do about it: A framework for negotiating meaningful evaluation in nonprofits. American Journal of Evaluation, 35(2). 171-188.
Nonprofit organizations are under great pressure to use evaluations to show that their programs “work” and that they are “effective.” However, empirical evidence indicates that nonprofits struggle to perform useful evaluations, especially when conducted under accountability pressures. An increasing body of evidence highlights the crucial role of a participatory negotiation process between nonprofits and stakeholders on the purpose and design of evaluations in achieving evaluation utility. However, conceptual confusion about the evaluation objectives, unclear evaluation purposes, a lack of appropriate evaluation questions, and normative ideas about superior evaluation designs and methods, complicate the process. In response, we provide practical conceptualizations of the central objectives of evaluations and propose a framework that can guide negotiation processes. It presents the relationships between the evaluation purpose, evaluation question, and the different levels of effects that should be measured. The selection of the evaluation method is contingent on the choices made within this framework.

Testa, M., Livingston, J.A., and VanZile-Tamen, C. (2011). Advancing the study of violence against women using mixed methods: Integrating qualitative methods into a quantitative research program. Violence Against Women, 17(2), 236-250.
A mixed methods approach, combining quantitative with qualitative data methods and analysis, offers a promising means of advancing the study of violence. Integrating semi-structured interviews and qualitative analysis into a quantitative program of research on women’s sexual victimization has resulted in valuable scientific insight and generation of novel hypotheses for testing. This mixed methods approach is described and recommendations for integrating qualitative data into quantitative research are provided.