Understand and evaluate family violence programs for your community Twenty years ago, the major issue in creating interventions to prevent domestic violence was persuading the courts, the funding agencies, and society that domestic violence was a serious problem worthy of time, trouble, and money. Now that the importance of domestic violence has been established, we need safe and effective ways to evaluate those interventions to see which ones are working and how they can be improved. Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research brings together some of the best minds in the field discussing such vital evaluation issues as policy implications, alternative designs for evaluation studies, and ethical concerns. This comprehensive book approaches the vexed question of evaluation with compassion as well as scientific rigor. Clearly, traditional double-blind studies and control groups are difficult to conduct when family violence is the subject; it is ethically indefensible to sit back and watch abusers hurt their mates or children when interventions are available. Yet finding usable methods of program evaluation is also essential.Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research confronts these questions and discusses practical ways to evaluate a variety of domestic violence programs. Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research draws on years of experience to address the difficult questions raised, including: going beyond evaluating program effectiveness to analyze why and how interventions help change behavior creating new research designs to adapt to the unique concerns of the family violence field using meta-analysis for program evaluation research determining the interaction between research and program results identifying barriers between community activists and social scientists that may impede research Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research offers fresh and creative ways to do program evaluations, guarantee subjects'physical and emotional safety, and make good science humane.

Based on a large-scale survey and in light of demographic and cultural factors, the author examines why children are sexually victimized, the sources of trauma, differences between reported and unreported cases of assault, possible increases in sexual victimization, and the experiences of abused chi

Children are the most criminally victimized segment of the population, and a substantial number face multiple, serious "poly-victimizations" during a single year. And despite the fact that the priority emphasis in academic research and government policy has traditionally gone to studying juvenile delinquents, children actually appear before authorities more frequently as victims than as offenders. But at the same time, the media and many advocates have failed to note the good news: rates of sexual abuse, child homicide, and many other forms of victimization declined dramatically after the mid-1990s, and some terribly feared forms of child victimization, like stereotypical stranger abduction, are remarkably uncommon. The considerable ignorance about the realities of child victimization can be chalked up to a field that is fragmented, understudied, and subjected to political demagoguery. In this persuasive book, David Finkelhor presents a comprehensive new vision to encompass the prevention, treatment, and study of juvenile victims, unifying conventional subdivisions like child molestation, child abuse, bullying, and exposure to community violence. Developmental victimology, his term for this integrated perspective, looks at child victimization across childhood's span and yields fascinating insights about how to categorize juvenile victimizations, how to think about risk and impact, and how victimization patterns change over the course of development. The book also provides a valuable new model of society's response to child victimization - what Finkelhor calls the Juvenile Victim Justice System - and a fresh way of thinking about barriers that victims and their families encounter when seeking help. These models will be very useful to anyone seeking to improve the way we try to help child victims. Crimes against children still happen far too often, but by proposing a new framework for thinking about the issue, Childhood Victimization opens a promising door to reducing its frequency and improving the response. Professionals, policymakers, and child advocates will find this paradigm-shifting book to be a valuable addition to their shelves.

Since the McMartin Preschool case in Manhattan Beach, California, many communities around the country have also been rocked by cases of sexual abuse of very young children in day care. While child welfare workers, prosecutors, and counselors have deliberated about how to respond to such cases, parents, day care staff, and state regulators have wondered whether day care was still a safe place for children. Now a new book addresses this disturbing problem, based on the first nationwide study of 270 cases of sexual abuse in day care. How could children be abused without their parents suspecting? How could trusted day care employees conceal abuse? Can offenders be screened from the ranks of day care employees? Can abusers be brought to justice without further trauma to the children? The authors, well known researchers in the field of child abuse, explore these questions and many others using a wealth of case material and careful analyses. Chapters cover incidence and dynamics, the impact on victims, disclosure and detection, the perpetrators, and the impact on local communities. Over 16 recommendations are forwarded for the prevention, detection, and investigation of these cases. Practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and students will benefit from the information provided in this long-awaited study. "I urge everyone who is concerned about the well being of children, both in day care and out, to obtain a copy of this [book], read it, and to use it. Its recommendations for parents, child care providers, policy makers, and government are both well-based on the researchers' findings and well-reasoned as practical, feasible responses." --John Chafee, United States Senator "Students and professionals researching the topic of sexual abuse of preschool-age children will welcome this well-documented study, which discusses the types of people who perpetrate such crimes and the characteristics of the victims (including risk factors). Case studies--with synopses of the abuse incidents--are presented in the search for answers to why these crimes happen, how they can be prevented, and what impact they have on the victims. Final chapters present the authors' recommendations as to how child abuse can be prevented. An excellent piece of research and analysis for larger public libraries." --Booklist "Written by our nation's premier workers in the field of sexual abuse, Nursery Crimes: Sexual Abuse in Day Care is an enlightening and thought-provoking book. . . a scholarly endeavor that culminates with pragmatic and concrete policy recommendations. This book is must reading for all researchers and policy makers interested in this important and timely topic." --Edward Zigler, Yale University "This is an incredibly important source book on the subject." --Journal of the Institute of Health Education "This volume examines the incidence of the problem, describes the perpetrators of this abuse, evaluates screening strategies for limiting their access to children, and describes the victims, abuse dynamics, and whether the characteristics of the facilities minimize the risk of child sexual abuse. The book also discusses the detection and disclosure process and the impact on children. . . . This book is an excellent resource for all professionals working in the child sexual abuse area, ranging from therapists to investigators to judicial personnel." --Contemporary Psychology "This research project marks an important step toward understanding abuse in day care, and the book extends its usefulness to researchers, educators, administrators, and policymakers, as well as parents. . . . In the midst of widespread fear and confusion about sexual abuse in day care, Nursery Crimes provides practical strategies for confronting this problem." --Criminal Justice Review

This decade review of scientific knowledge about the problem of child sexual abuse integrates as much of the current interdisciplinary literature as possible, both unpublished and recently published, with the older literature. The authors consider five main topics--prevalence of sexual abuse, children at high risk, offenders, effects, and prevention. The book reviews findings from community survey studies which shed light on how widespread sexual abuse is in the population at large and which groups of children are at greatest risk. It also reports on the prison studies concerning why it is that offenders offend and examines all the studies from clinical literature which try to determine what the long-term effects of sexual abuse are on victims. In addition, the book contains a valuable chapter on research design which makes suggestions that every potential investigator in this field needs to be familiar with. The book is written in a clear, organized fashion and addresses the most pressing issues in the field of sexual abuse at the current time. "I consider David Finkelhor to be the best and most knowledgeable researcher in child sexual abuse in the United States today. A Sourcebook on Child Sexual Abuse has added immeasurably to the scientific quality of this field." --Diana E. H. Russell, Mills College, Oakland, California "Finkelhor's ability to cut through the jargon of published research and sort out the meaningful findings is an invaluable help to clinicians in identifying issues in their work." --Gail Ryan, Adolescent Perpetrator Network "Unique, up-to-the-minute, and indispensable for anyone who needs to understand what is known and not known about sexual abuse." --Murray A. Straus, University of New Hampshire "Finkelhor and his associates have been in the forefront during the last decade in challenging western society with impeccable research into the prevalence of sexual abuse. A succinct comparative array of research material and findings . . . the student is provided with a bible which will serve well as a guide through the minefield of often contradictory literature on child sexual abuse." --Social Work Education "Finkelhor and his colleagues have provided a book that exemplifies social science research at its best. This sourcebook is thoughtful and knowledgeable, without being patronizing or condescending to the practitioners who must act on a day-to-day basis. . . . An important contribution to the field." --Journal of Marriage and the Family "This 'sourcebook' is thoughtful and knowledgeable, without being patronizing or condescending to the practitioners. . .We have come to expect this level of thoughtfulness and quality from Finkelhor (and) this latest book fulfills that expectation. . . . An important contribution to the field. . . . This book is an excellent resource because it is a comprehensive gathering of facts of child sexual abuse, spanning the past ten years. It would be helpful to anyone involved in the intervention or research of child sexual abuse. It is an excellent overview for students." --Family Violence Bulletin "An invaluable directional guide to such thorny issues as the 'prevalence of sexual abuse, children at high risk, offenders, effects, and prevention.'" --New Society "The chapters are well organized and clearly written. . . . For the pediatric psychologist or other clinicians who might be new to the area, or who might need a compilation of research findings for a grant proposal, the book does indeed serve as a sourcebook of accurate and detailed information in the five areas that are covered." --Journal of Pediatric Psychology "We need quiet, dispassionate facts like the ones presented in Finkelhor's book. He coolly lists the conditions under which child sexual abuse is most likely to occur. . . . Clearly, the sexual abuse of children should arouse intense emotions in us all. It is a serious crime and should carry serious penalties. It is precisely because of this that someone needs to be dispassionate about the subject and lay out the facts for us. Finkelhor accomplishes this . . ." --International Social Science Review

This unique volume attests to the coming of age of research on family violence. Leading authorities in this interdisciplinary area--including psychologists, sociologists, social work researchers, and physicians--provide a comprehensive survey of current studies and controversies. They offer useful insights into such ongoing concerns as wife battering and child neglect and abuse, and criteria for distinguishing when child abuse or marital violence have actually taken place. They also explore relatively new areas of research such as child sexual abuse and marital rape. Representing the best of a decade of empirical, theoretical, and clinical work, this book should be required reading for academics, professionals, and students who are interested in--or must deal with--family violence. "Many of the most widely-recognized and respected researchers on family violence contributed to this state-of-the-art volume. . . The Dark Side of Families presents a multitude of perspectives and research approaches useful to service providers, policymakers and researchers. This collection presents information and insight that will be valuable to all who are interested and concerned about the problem of family violence." --Response "Represents the 'state of the art' in theorizing about and researching family violence. . . . Will supplant earlier volumes of collected papers such as Joanne Cook and Roy Tyler Bowless's Child Abuse (1980)." --Choice "The style of presentation is scholarly, indicating greater theoretical and methodological sophistication in research on family violence and abuse than in the past." --Planned Parenthood "An essential reference for the serious researcher, containing brief reports by many of the major family violence researchers in the country. . . . The major contribution of the book is its methodological contributions. Many of the papers in the book deal with measurement techniques and other methodological concerns. It is in this domain that marital-violence and child-abuse researchers have the most to offer one another. Careful reading of these papers would be essential for anyone seriously studying family violence." --Contemporary Sociology