Combining Campbell Standards and the Realist Evaluation Approach

This article presents an approach to systematic reviews that combines the Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice standards and the realist notion of contexts-mechanisms-outcomes (CMO) configurations. Both approaches have their advantages and drawbacks, and the authors will make a case for combining both approaches to profit from their advantages without having to deal with their separate weaknesses. They proceed to discuss how their approach should be put into practice and illustrate its use by giving a concise description of an example from their own work on the effects of prevention of violence. The authors conclude with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of their suggested approach and state that combining Campbell standards and the realist evaluation approach should be done more often.

[1]  Catrien Bijleveld,et al.  Fare dodging and the strong arm of the law , 2007 .

[2]  Frans L. Leeuw,et al.  Trends and Developments in Program Evaluation in General and Criminal Justice Programs in Particular , 2005 .

[3]  F. Leeuw,et al.  Reconstructing Program Theories: Methods Available and Problems to be Solved , 2003 .

[4]  Ray Pawson,et al.  Evidence-based Policy: The Promise of `Realist Synthesis' , 2002 .

[5]  A. Petrosino,et al.  Meeting the Challenges of Evidence-Based Policy: The Campbell Collaboration , 2001 .

[6]  C. Nuttall.  The Home Office and Random Allocation Experiments , 2003, Evaluation review.

[7]  David B. Wilson,et al.  A systematic review of drug court effects on recidivism , 2007 .

[8]  David P. Farrington,et al.  Methodological Quality Standards for Evaluation Research , 2003 .

[9]  Brandon C. Welsh,et al.  The Maryland Scientific Methods Scale , 2003 .

[10]  J. Elster,et al.  Nuts and bolts for the social sciences , 1989 .

[11]  Maria Simosi.  Using Toulmin's Framework for the Analysis of Everyday Argumentation: Some Methodological Considerations , 2003 .

[12]  J. Eck.  When is a bologna sandwich better than sex? A defense of small-n case study evaluations , 2006 .

[13]  Ray Pawson,et al.  Evidence-based policy: a realist perspective. , 2006 .

[14]  David P. Farrington,et al.  Evaluating ‘Communities that Care’ , 1998 .

[15]  Mark Petticrew,et al.  Why certain systematic reviews reach uncertain conclusions , 2003, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[16]  P. Hedström,et al.  Social mechanisms : an analytical approach to social theory , 1999 .

[17]  S. Toulmin.  The uses of argument , 1960 .

[18]  Ann Oakley,et al.  Experiments in Knowing: Gender and Method in the Social Sciences , 2001 .

[19]  S. Bogaerts,et al.  Violence Defied?: A Review of Prevention of Violence in the Public and Semi-public Domain , 2006 .

[20]  N. Rodriguez.  Restorative Justice at Work: Examining the Impact of Restorative Justice Resolutions on Juvenile Recidivism , 2007 .

[21]  Nick Tilley,et al.  WHAT WORKS IN EVALUATION RESEARCH , 1994 .

[22]  D. Gottfredson,et al.  Improving evaluation of anti-crime programs: Summary of a National Research Council report★ , 2006 .

[23]  R. Mason.  Challenging strategic planning assumptions , 1981 .

[24]  F. Leeuw,et al.  Reducing the Knowledge–Practice Gap: A New Method Applied to Crime Prevention , 2007 .

[25]  Peter Reuter,et al.  Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising. Research in Brief. National Institute of Justice. , 1998 .

[26]  A. Harrell.  Towards systematic knowledge building: An anti-crime research and development continuum , 2006 .

[27]  M. Pullmann,et al.  Juvenile Offenders With Mental Health Needs: Reducing Recidivism Using Wraparound , 2006 .

[28]  David P. Farrington,et al.  Methodological quality and the evaluation of anti-crime programs , 2006 .

[29]  Brandon C. Welsh,et al.  Evidence-Based Crime Prevention , 2002 .