Webinar: Strengthening Your Reentry Program Evaluation Through Primary Data Collection

Evaluating your reentry program often requires collecting primary data. It is important to follow best practices when collecting data. These include the following:  

• Carefully consider what data are needed from whom, when, and how.
• Design the data collection instrument, including listing the key constructs and identifying items and scales.
• Develop and implement data-collection protocols to both minimize risk to study participants and to facilitate collection of high-quality data.

This webinar also includes a presentation by the Nebraska Center for Justice Research. The presentation reviews the advantages of mixed-methods data collection (using both quantitative and qualitative data); the challenges of sample-selection bias and suggestions for reducing its impact; and the challenges of using a single measure of recidivism (i.e., return to prison) instead of multiple, holistic measures that are often associated with the desistance construct.  

This webinar from the Evaluation and Sustainability Training and Technical Assistance (ES TTA) team at RTI International and the Center for Justice Innovation (formerly the Center for Court Innovation) includes a discussion of the best practices associated with primary data collection for program evaluations and also includes real-world data collection experiences from the Nebraska Center for Justice Research. 

Speakers include:

• Christine Lindquist, Director, Corrections and Reentry Research Program, and Samuel Scaggs, Research Criminologist, RTI International
• Ryan Spohn, Director,  and Michael Campagna, Research Associate, Nebraska Center for Justice Research, University of Nebraska at Omaha