Background: Mentoring has drawn substantial interest from policymakers, intervention theorists, and those interested in identifying promising and useful evidence-based approaches to interventions for criminal justice and child welfare outcomes (Grossman & Tierney, 1998; Jekliek et al., 2002). Mentoring is one of the most commonly-used…

HIV/AIDS is one of the most important public health challenges facing Nigeria today. Recent evidence has revealed that the adolescent population make up a large proportion of the 3.7% reported prevalence rate among Nigerians aged 15-49 years. School-based sexual health education has therefore become an important tool towards fighting this problem.…

Three possible versions of Project Follow Through are discussed to explore the kinds of knowledge that each approach would yield and to describe alternative ways in which the program could maintain the unique feature of federal coordination of research. Versions compared include (1) a federally coordinated research program designed to generate…

Responds to Gilliam et al.'s critique of evaluation of the Comprehensive Child Development Program (CCDP). Restates the policy implications of the study and comments on the design of the intervention and the evaluation. Concludes with remarks on how evaluation and research should be used to help low-income families. (Author/KB)

The objective of this study was to examine the research on moral development for findings which could be applied to the design of programs to cultivate moral development in children and youth. The conclusion drawn from the examination of the research is that neither the dominant theoretical frameworks (e.g., Kohlberg's theory) nor the data that…

Contends that success of supported employment service programs depends on the ability of new programs to replicate results of supported work demonstration projects. Notes that the capacity to verify accurate replication independently is limited, as is knowledge of the extent to which supported employment demonstration programs generalize to a wide…

In "Holding Accountability to Account: How Scholarship and Experience in Other Fields Inform Exploration of Performance Incentives in Education"--a paper presented at the National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference in February--Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, argues educational…

Health education researchers have occasionally used measuring tools inappropriately. Test validity and the use of criterion-referenced tests are discussed in view of this need to improve health education research. Also described are handbooks containing measuring devices for the use of health education researchers. (CJ)

Questions the effectiveness of specialized research because of the fragmentation of knowledge. Argues that inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional research are needed to restore a sense of wholeness to the process of inquiry. Discusses the importance and the advantages of inter-disciplinary research and describes such a program. (GEA)

After commenting on the underrepresentation of foreign countries in the directories of the International Clearinghouse on Science and Mathematics, the author describes his survey of 12 environmental science education programs in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Oceania and 56 American projects, comparing them on curriculum development, topics, and…

This two-phase study describes ways in which family day care providers perceived and implemented their caregiving practices. The study revealed that what family day care providers intended to provide for children--a loving, attentive, play-filled environment--was not consistently provided in practice. (Author/BB)

Group-randomized trials (GRTs)--studies that evaluate the efficacy or effectiveness of interventions occurring at the group level--are increasingly used to assess the effects of school-based prevention programs on behavioral outcomes of children and adolescents. These designs pose many implementation and design challenges for school…

The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect upon the mixed/modest results of the primary studies related to the effectiveness of physical activity enhancement and improving nutritional intake in obesity prevention programs for children and youth. The results of a recent review of this topic that included 57 randomized controlled trials…

This report of a panel discussion focuses on the design, rationale, and evaluation of the Adolescent Crisis Unit for Treatment and Evaluation (ACUTE), a program of crisis intervention for young adolescents. An overview of the structure of ACUTE's clinical program describes the efficiency of the program in seeing referrals at the time of crisis,…

The first author set out to design and secure funding for an hypothesis-based program in a public school setting. The natural history of what happened to that study as it proceeded from design, to funding, to actual implementation, to final reporting serves as the case history of two idealistic evaluators' wildest nightmares. (Author)