Violence Prevention for Young Adolescents: The State of the Art of Program Evaluation. Working Papers. Proceedings of the Carnegie Corporation Conference on Violence Prevention for Young Adolescents (Washington, D.C., July 12-13, 1990).

This report contains a summary of a survey of violence prevention programs and a conference on the state of the art in evaluating such programs, as well as conclusions and recommendations. The survey of 51 violence prevention programs focused on evaluation activities. Analysis of the data indicated: frequently the goals have not been used to refine objectives that can be used in evaluation design; there have been few attempts to employ multiple measures of impact; and there has been little attempt to examine the differential effects of interventions on subgroups of youth at risk. The conference summary includes texts of presentations by four individuals and findings from the discussion. These conclusions and recommendations are presented: (1) funding and technical assistance should be made available to review identified promising programs; (2) the provision of resources for the expanded evaluation of promising programs is a task beyond the capacity of any single funding source; and (3) the identified promising projects should be used as laboratories for the development of intermediate outcome measures, for the validation of existing measures, and for the development of new evaluation methods. Specific product recommendations made include a handbook on violence prevention and a catalog on culturally sensitive measures in evaluation. Recommended activities include convening an annual meeting; conducting a summer institute; developing interdisciplinary research centers; increasing outreach to and recruitment of minority students and faculty; and conducting rigorous evaluations of model programs. (ABL)