Suchergebnisse

Technology assessment (TA) is one model for synthesizing social science research and theory for policymakers. TA requires an unbiased assessment of social research presented in understandable and policy-relevant form. This article describes the conduct of three studies for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) concerned with psychotherapy, treatment for alcoholism, and the conduct of polygraph tests. The studies indicate the potential for systematic integrations of social research and their function in a political and policy environment. Review of these studies suggests that theory is critical in policy research and that social research, rather than a decision-making tool, can serve an "educative" function aiding policymakers to understand complexity.

AbstractThe author reviews efforts of the 96th Congress to use evaluation data in considering whether to change policies about reimbursement for psychotherapy services.

The Judicial Council and Its Objectives. My assignment is to implement Professor Sunderland's brilliant primer on judicial councils by a more specific presentation utilizing the experiences of the New York State Judicial Council. Of the three elements that enter into a consideration of the judicial branch of government, the first—the substantive law, the law of rights and duties—is not within the province of the judicial council either in New York or elsewhere. The second element—the machinery of justice—is the principal field of the judicial council. If the council does its work well in that field, attention cannot fail to be focused upon the third and most important element—also part of a judicial council's problems—the judicial personnel.

Despite the utility of substance abuse treatment, large numbers of people with serious substance use problems do not get the treatment that is needed. Communities that participated in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's "Fighting Back" program (see Saxe et al., this issue) developed a range of strategies to facilitate the provision of treatment to community members. As part of the national evaluation of Fighting Back, a general population survey conducted in 1995, 1997, and 1999 in 12 of the Fighting Back communities and 29 comparison communities assessed problem substance use, dependence, and treatment. These data were used to examine whether the gap between treatment need and treatment utilization was reduced in the Fighting Back communities. Results indicated that the discrepancy between treatment need and utilization of specialized treatment was unchanged, with as few as 6% to 7% identified as needing treatment actually receiving treatment. There were, however, a number of characteristics that distinguished those who received treatment from those who did not: (1) females were more than seven times less likely to receive treatment when needed than were males; (2) African Americans were four times less likely and Hispanics three times less likely than White respondents; (3) those 25 years and younger were four times less likely than those over 25; (4) unemployed and those living in poverty were three times more likely to receive treatment. The implications of these findings are that even within comprehensive approaches to substance abuse, more must be done to identify those in need of treatment, to understand the factors that explain the discrepancies between those in need of treatment who do and do not receive treatment, and to develop methods for getting those in need into treatment.

AbstractThe Robert Wood Johnson Foundation sponsors the Fighting Back initiative, in which communities across the country receive funding to combat alcohol and drug use. The evaluators of this initiative have tried to present an evaluation that is responsive to both national policy agendas and local community contextual differences, and thus offer important insight for both levels.

The evaluation of community-based programs poses special design and analysis problems. The present article focuses on two major types of errors that can occur in such evaluations: false positives—incorrectly declaring a program to be effective—and false negatives—incorrectly declaring a program to be ineffective. The evaluation of a national demonstration of community- based programs to reduce substance abuse, Fighting Back, is used to illustrate several ap proaches to reduce the probability of errors. Both those errors that are affected by the design and those by analytic approaches are considered. Ways to assess multiple outcomes and to match the complexity of the program with design and analytic strategies are proposed. Community trials are complex interventions, and, although they can provide very useful information, their outcomes have to be understood in terms of the constructs they test and the contexts within which they are carried out.