I found a sample proposal from Florida International University. There is a note on this proposal sample that is based off of a funded proposal, but has little resemblance to the actual proposal. I thought this sample was useful to look at because I believe it is similar to the ones we will be submitting for our projects. This proposal is aimed at the emotional, behavioral, and academic adaptation of immigrant elementary, middle, and high school students in relation to their post-immigration stress and social support. The anticipated results of this study are that high levels of social stress and low levels of social support following migration are to be associated with poorer adaptation. Since the research is using school-aged children, they covered appropriate measures to ensure guardians are informed and consent of the research and the children’s identity is concealed. The research will use the Children’s Convoy Mapping Procedure to collect social support information, “a checklist of stressful life events adapted from Johnson” to collect general family info, scales developed by Gil and Vega (1996) to measure acculturative conflict, and perceived discrimination, Children’s Depression Inventory-Short Form (CDI-S) (Kovacs, 1985), and the Harter (1985) Self-Perception Profile to collect adjustment measures information, and grade reports and standardized achievement test scores to measure the children’s achievement. Once the data is collected the researcher will use a multiple regression analysis to try to prove their hypothesis, that higher levels of family stress and lower levels of social support will be associated with poorer adjustment.

This proposal was very interesting and could add much needed information about U.S. child immigrants and their achievements in schools. While this proposal is an example and extremely useful for us to look at, I do not believe this example proposal would be funded or accepted by the IRB since it is short and lacks some information. The proposal does not mention the specific site the research will be taken from. The proposal also mentions several ways of measuring data that is not described in the proposal. Overall this example proposal is extremely useful for reference when practicing writing research proposals but would also need more substance if it were to actually be funded or accepted by the IRB.

http://www2.fiu.edu/~levittmj/Sample%20Proposal.pdf

In the Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice Journal of October of 2005, J. Scott Allen Jr. and James O. Windell speak about their research through their article “An Application of Fear Appeal Messages to Enhance the Benefits of a Jail Encounter Program for Youthful Offenders”, regarding scared straight jail encounter programs effects on the delinquent youth. Allen and Windell recognize that jail encounter programs aimed at youth delinquents do not effect the recidivism rates, however they conducted psychological research which shows that the inmate-youth encounter programs incited more fear in the youth, which increases the chances of an attitude change in the youth. This research was done with one two-hour program in a county jail in a suburb of a large midwestern city. This program used fear, encouragement, and recommendations to try to help 16 and 17 year old delinquents who where court ordered to attend the program. After the 327 participants had finished the program they were given a self-report survey. This self-report survey was analyzed to find any correlation between attitude change and fear from the scared straight program. While the research didn’t look at recidivism or the youth’s attitudes on a later date, the research shows that the youth had a more negative view of jail due to the fear from the scared straight program. This is an interesting study since it is widely known among researchers that scared straight programs do not decrease recidivism.

In 2010 Paul M. Klenowski, Keith J. Bell, and Kimberly D. Dodson published “An Empirical Evaluation of Juvenile Awareness Programs in the United States: Can Juveniles be ‘Scared Straight’?” in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. This study assessed twelve evaluations of ten juvenile awareness programs. They used the Maryland Scientific Scale for assessing the scholarly evolutions of the programs, which is widely accepted in the criminal justice field. The SMS (Maryland Scientific Methods Scale) is a five-point scale that measures the methodological rigor of the evaluations of the juvenile awareness programs. The SMS ranges from 1 (the least rigorous) to 5 (the most rigorous). If the evaluations of the juvenile awareness programs in which the researchers are looking at have a high enough rigor, they “can classify the effectiveness of a program into one of four categories: ‘what works, what does not work, what is promising, and what is unknown’” (258). A program that can be classified as working has to have at least two evaluations that are 3 to 5 rankings on the SMS scale.
In the end, this meta-analysis is yet another study showing the lack of effectiveness of juvenile prevention programs on recidivism. However, while this study shows that youth are likely continue or even increase their delinquent behavior after attending these programs; Klenowski, Bell, and Dodson suggest that certain aspects of these juvenile awareness programs, like non-confrontational programs in conjunction with other promising crime prevention strategies, should be taken into consideration. While this study is another study pointing to the lack of effectiveness of juvenile awareness programs, like scared straight, it is one of the few that suggests that non-confrontational programs in conjunction with other crime prevention strategies should be looked into.

http://0-search.ebscohost.com.books.redlands.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=50038747&site=ehost-live

In 2003 Joan McCord uses five case studies of Crime Prevention programs in the American Academy of Political and Social Science Journal article, “Cures That Harm: Unanticipated Outcomes of Crime Prevention Programs”, to take a look at crime prevention programs effectiveness and the program’s evaluations of their effectiveness. By using five case studies from a randomized sample, McCord takes descriptive organization data and beliefs of the organization to look at, specifically, how these organizations may have good intentions while at the same time are potentially doing harm. Many of the crime prevention programs have the belief that if the program helps one individual then it is worth it and other similar positive beliefs that are used as an excuse not to use evaluations of the program. While these programs may think positively about the work they are doing and at the same time not see a need to report their evaluation, the programs are relying on testimonials or researchers that are biased. This lack of evaluation is harmful to many as it allows a social program to continue to operate even with adverse effects. McCord concludes by insisting that these Crime Prevention Programs must be evaluated for both adverse effects and benefits. The evaluation should be unbiased and should use a random assignment of individuals for both the treatment and comparison group. Overall, McCord argues that more attention should be paid to the effects of these crime prevention programs.

http://ann.sagepub.com/content/587/1/16.short

In 2008 Greenwood evaluates evidence-based delinquency prevention programs and analyzes programs that are successful, as well as examples of programs that are not successful. The prevention programs are analyzed on their standards for effectiveness as well as their cost benefit analysis. Greenwood used several studies of juvenile delinquency programs and compared them against each other in terms of average effectiveness, and cost benefit analysis, for all the juvenile delinquency studies. This meta-analysis helps compare and contrast the different juvenile delinquency programs, and will hopefully create some guidance to policy makers, communities, and family members of delinquents as to what programs are most likely to work.

Greenwood discovers that overall, the general public prefers treatment and rehabilitation compared to punishment for juvenile delinquents. Yet, only about five percent of juveniles have been able to take part in promising school and community based prevention programs, due to the custodial care and community supervision being a widespread common prevention option – regardless of its effectiveness.

Prevention programs that are community based and emphasize the role of family ties are successful. While prevention programs, such as scared straight programs that bring juvenile delinquents together for programing, intensive supervision and programs which focus on the individual offender, are much less successful than programs which focus on family and community ties.

Greenwood’s meta-analysis is very interesting and extremely useful when researching juvenile delinquency programs because he not only compares the cost benefits and effectiveness rates of each evidence-based program, but he also analyzes the programs in terms of what makes it effective and the aspects of these programs that are not effective.

http://0-www.jstor.org.books.redlands.edu/stable/20179984

“Another Look at Scared Straight” by Sheryl Feinstein from the Journal of Correctional Education is a study done looking at the impact of adult prisoner presentations on juvenile delinquents using twenty-four male juvenile delinquents in a detention facility. Two male adult prisoners accompanied by a guard visited the twenty-four juvenile delinquents and spoke about their life before prison, and their life in prison.

Feinstein notes that according to the large amount of research done, scared straight programs aimed at youth at-risk of becoming delinquent has little positive impact on youth and even produce higher recidivism rates among the youth. While Feinstein understands scared straight programs are not preventative for at-risk youth, she is interested in the impact of adult prisoner presentations (commonly used in scared straight programs) on juvenile delinquents that are currently held in a juvenile correctional facility.

Feinstein had the twenty-four male juvenile delinquents complete a survey to collect their opinions and beliefs after they had attended the adult male prisoners presentation. After collecting the data, Feinstein used cross tabulation to look at the impact of the presentation on the youths’ thoughts on drugs, alcohol, gangs, fighting, authority defiance, and living on the streets.

Of the topics presented through the adult prisoners presentation, drugs and alcohol had the most impact on the juvenile delinquents. In total, 55% of the juvenile delinquents believed this presentation would prevent them from going to prison. As Feinstein notes, that while this study only looks at the short-term affects of adult prisoner presentations on juvenile delinquents the presentation may have only had a short-term effect on the youth. Feinstein concludes, that while scared straight programs may only prevent crime for a period of time after the program, it is important that more research should be done with scared straight programs on at-risk youth and juvenile delinquents.

This research is interesting since it is one of the few studies that looks purely at short-term impact of scared straight programs on juvenile delinquents currently in a juvenile correctional facility. While this is a study unlike others it is also interesting that it suggests that perhaps scared straight programs for both at-risk youth and juvenile delinquents are useful for deterring crime rather than preventing it, an interesting view about a program that is continually criticized for its long term impact.

“Another Look at Scared Straight”
By Sheryl Feinstein

Journal of Correctional Education (1974-), Vol. 56, No. 1 (March 2005)

http://0-www.jstor.org.books.redlands.edu/stable/23282782

In “’Scared Straight’ and Other Juvenile Awareness Programs for Preventing Juvenile Delinquency” by Anthony Petrosino, Carolyn Turpin, and John Buehler they aimed to answer whether Scared Straight programs and other juvenile awareness programs aimed at preventing delinquency has an influence in the at-risk youths’ participation in delinquent activity after attendance of the program. In total Petrosino, Turpin, and Buehler used nine randomly picked scared straight programs and collected data on the post program offending rates of the “scared straight” participants. In the end they found that “Scared Straight” programs put at-risk youth at a much higher chance, about 28% higher, of becoming a delinquent compared to the no treatment control group.

This research uses a nine Scared Straight programs and a control group. The randomly chosen Scared Straight programs included varying facets of their programs, often including a tour, an inmate presentation, and perhaps a day as a prisoner. The researchers relied on self-reports as to whether they have become delinquent or not after the program. This research is very interesting and is laid out very well. It is astounding that a program aimed at scaring at-risk youth into being law-abiding citizens can have such negative outcomes. This research is used as evidence by The Justice Department as to why they do not support Scared Straight programs for at-risk youth.

The authors delve into the topics of prevention of youth violence by questioning whether the trajectories of past violence predict future violence better than other, more traditional measures of risk. As well as, what factors of violence can be altered during a juveniles early years of exposure to violence-causing factors that can prevent or protect individuals against violence?
In this article the authors first explain that trajectories of past violence foretell future violence in youth better than other, more traditional measures of risk. The authors then gauge whether elements that can be controlled during youth can promote less violence for all individuals. This article finds that several factors protect youth from violent behavior. Unfortunately, these factors do not protect youth from gun or weapon carrying.
The researchers used the Rochester Youth Development Study, 14 interviews of youth from their early teenage years through age 31. The authors used 20 potential factors that lead to violence. They used two methods of analysis for this data. The first one is the well-established method that was a prevention model where the violent and risky behavior had yet to appear and they ran the correlation between the factors and the data from the Rochester Youth Development Study. The second method projected the youth’s risk based on trajectories of prior violent behavior and ran correlations between the factors and the trajectories. The data suggests that the trajectories are more accurate in predicting the youths involvement with crime. It also suggests that factors that contribute to violence are accumulated over time and harder to prevent.

Crime & Delinquency 2014, Vol. 60(3) 379–401

“Examining Perceptions of School Safety Strategies, School Climate, and Violence” by Lesile Booren, Deborah handy, and Thomas Power aims to explore differences in perceptions of school climate/connection, school safety practices, and violence between students and teachers. This includes determining if school safety issues affect the perceived relevance of safety strategies. This article researches the perception of school safety, school connection, and school violence in faculty and students by using 184 student and 32 teacher surveys from one pacific northwest high school on the outskirts of a mid-to-large city. After this research was analyzed by describing and comparing student and teacher data, it was apparent that perceived school safety, connection, and violence vary between teachers and students. Teachers’ perception of connection and climate in the school was significantly higher than the students’ perception. This is then used to encourage safety programs and school climate programs to involve the students in determining appropriate safety measures rather than solely teachers.

This study was very interesting in terms of using it to determine how one can go about looking at students and teachers perception of violence and safety strategies in schools. However, it is even more interesting to see that this study could have been done using in-depth interviews, yet they opted for easily obtainable qualitative data using a five point scale, one being unimportant and five being very important. By using the scale and qualitative data they were able to easily and quickly compare the students and teachers perceptions.

Booren, L. M., D. J. Handy, and T. G. Power. “Examining Perceptions of School Safety Strategies, School Climate, and Violence.” Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 9.2 (2010): 171-87.