Youth Villages is dedicated to expanding the knowledge base in the fields of child welfare and children's mental health. We are eager to utilize our data resources to answer important questions in these areas. Listed below are current and recent projects that are the result of collaboration with university-based researchers.
- Detecting and correcting selection bias due to non-response in long-term follow-up surveys – working with Dr. Richard Barth (University of Maryland) and Dr. Teresa Waters (University of Tennessee Health Science Center) we are examining the factors that impact response to long-term follow-ups and how those factors might influence the observed outcomes.
- Factors affecting long-term outcomes following Youth Villages’ services – a three-part study, led by Dr. Richard Barth and a team from the University of North Carolina, utilized Youth Villages’ substantial data resources to look at the relationship between assessment measures and long-term outcomes, to compare outcomes from youth served in residential treatment with those served in the in-home services program (using propensity score matching), and to examine the contribution of therapist characteristics (demographics, education, stability) to long-term outcomes. This work produced articles published in Children & Youth Services Review, the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, and Research in Social Work Practice.
- "Effectiveness of Juvenile Sexual Offender Programs: A Meta-Analysis" by Dr. Lorraine Reitzel. Winning the 2005 Graduate Student Research Award from the Association for Treatment of Sexual Abusers, Dr. Reitzel's dissertation examined program effectiveness and made recommendations for program improvements. Youth Villages provided data on client characteristics and long-term outcomes for Dr. Reitzel's research.
- "Parental Efficacy and Juvenile Delinquency: Longitudinal Analysis of At-Risk Adolescents after treatment" - Dr. George Lord (formerly of Indiana University Northwest) and Dr. Shanhe Jiang (University of Toledo) examined data generated from The Prevention Project (described above) to study issues of social support and social control as they relate to parental efficacy and its impact on juvenile delinquency. The first manuscript of this work was presented at the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Annual Meeting.
- Worked with Dr. Mark Vander Weg (formerly of University of Memphis, now at University of Iowa) and his team on an evaluation of The Prevention Project, a clinical trial involving random assignment to treatment conditions, funded through the generous support of The Urban Child Institute, that sought to determine the efficacy of using intensive in-home services to prevent the removal of children from their home into state custody.
