Evaluation: A Systematic Approach is the bestselling comprehensive introduction to the field of programme evaluation, covering the range of evaluation research activities used in appraising the design, implementation, effectiveness and efficiency of social programmes. This Eighth Edition includes a new practical chapter on planning an evaluation.

This revised edition features updated research, new developments in technology, and recent policy on juvenile delinquency and youth violence. The authors underscore the enormous payoff in targeting potential serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders at the earliest opportunity and provide a framework for evidence-informed state juvenile justice systems: the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders. This strategy recognizes, first, that a relatively small proportion of those who enter the juvenile justice system will prove to be serious, violent, or chronic offenders, but that group accounts for a large proportion of overall delinquency. Second, this strategy builds on the fact that serious, violent, or chronic delinquency emerges along developmental pathways, allowing earlier identification of juveniles most at risk for later serious offending. A third component of this approach is effective intervention capable of reducing the recidivism of those juveniles most at risk for further delinquency. This framework emphasizes an evidence-based approach to reducing the recidivism of those juveniles most likely to reoffend from intake onward to probation, community programs, confinement, and reentry.

This handbook promotes a comprehensive strategy founded on evidence-based programming for juvenile justice systems to adopt or enhance their current system. The comprehensive strategy is supported strongly by the broad research base that is now available. This strategy recognizes, first, that a relatively small proportion of the juveniles who initially enter the juvenile justice system will prove to be serious, violent, or chronic offenders, but that group accounts for a large proportion of the overall amount of delinquency. An important component of a comprehensive evidence-based juvenile justice system, therefore, is distinguishing these offenders from others and focusing attention and resources on that smaller group. Second, a comprehensive strategy recognizes that serious, violent, or chronic delinquency emerges along developmental pathways that progress from less to more serious profiles of offending. Priority must be given to interrupting these offender careers by calibrating the level of supervision and control of the juveniles' behavior to their level of risk. The third major component of a comprehensive strategy, therefore, is effective intervention programs that are capable of reducing the recidivism of those juveniles at risk for further delinquency. The Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders is an administrative framework that supports a continuum of services that parallel the development of offender careers. This framework emphasizes evidence-based programming specifically on recidivism reduction, and supports protocols for developing comprehensive treatment plans that match effective services with offender treatment needs along the life-course of delinquent careers, as they move from intake onward, to probation, community programs, confinement, and reentry. Juvenile justice systems will benefit from incorporation of a comprehensive strategy as provided in the handbook.

"A book that describes the steps involved in a meta-analysis in an easy-to-understand format (not just as a cookbook recipe) will be a useful addition to the literature. Practical Meta-Analysis aptly fills this niche."

--ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH METHODS, April 2002

What research designs and methodological features qualify a study for meta-analysis and which disqualify it? What types of research reports are appropriate for the meta-analysis? What is the cultural and linguistic range of the studies to be included? By integrating and translating the current methodological and statistical work into a practical guide, the authors address these questions to provide readers with a state-of-the-art introduction to the various approaches to doing meta-analysis. Through the use of a simple metaphor, that of meta-analysis as a form of survey research in which research reports, rather than individual people, are surveyed, the authors show readers how to develop a coding form for their meta analysis, how to select and gather various research reports for the study, how to code the appropriate information about each study?s characteristics, and how to analyze the resulting data using various software packages.

"A book that describes the steps involved in a meta-analysis in an easy-to-understand format (not just as a cookbook recipe) will be a useful addition to the literature. Practical Meta-Analysis aptly fills this niche."

--ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH METHODS, April 2002

What research designs and methodological features qualify a study for meta-analysis and which disqualify it? What types of research reports are appropriate for the meta-analysis? What is the cultural and linguistic range of the studies to be included? By integrating and translating the current methodological and statistical work into a practical guide, the authors address these questions to provide readers with a state-of-the-art introduction to the various approaches to doing meta-analysis. Through the use of a simple metaphor, that of meta-analysis as a form of survey research in which research reports, rather than individual people, are surveyed, the authors show readers how to develop a coding form for their meta analysis, how to select and gather various research reports for the study, how to code the appropriate information about each study?s characteristics, and how to analyze the resulting data using various software packages.

Whether in the laboratory or while doing fieldwork, all researchers face an important challenge - designing research that will have sufficient sensitivity to detect those effects it purports to investigate. Sample size, validity, and sensitivity, experimental error, subject variability and the type of statistical analysis all influence the sensitivity of a research design. In this volume Lipsey examines the concept of design sensitivity and explains statistical power and the elements that determine it. Through careful explanations and selection of examples he explores a variety of topics: factors that degrade design sensitivity, effect size parameters and approaches to assessing it, how to estimate statistical power for various statistical tests, and the special problems statistical power poses for treatment effectiveness research. This book is a vital resource for evaluators, methodologists, statisticians, psychologists, public health professionals and educators.