Evaluation of the Girls Circle Program

This solicitation is designed to fund grants to document and measure the effectiveness of delinquency prevention, intervention, and/or treatment programs in preventing and reducing girls' risk behavior and offending. This program is authorized by the Department of Justice Appropriations Act, 2010 (Pub. L. 111-117).

Development Services Group will conduct an experimental evaluation of the Girls Circle (GC) model. Specifically, the goals of this study are to assess the short-term (from intake to program completion) and long-term (from intake to 12 months' post-program completion) effectiveness of the GC model. The sample will be obtained from the Juvenile Probation and Court Services Department (JPCSD) of the Circuit Court of Cook County in Chicago, Illinois. Random assignment will be used to allocate 336 subjects into either an experimental (treatment) or a control group. The treatment group will receive GC services while the control group will receive traditional non-gender specific probation services.

Four primary data sources will be used to measure variables: (1) baseline, program completion, and follow-up surveys; (2) GC case-file data; (3) JPCSD records; and (4) staff interviews and site observation. This study will assess the effectiveness of the GC program on four families of outcomes: delinquency, self-efficacy, emotional and behavioral strengths, and perceived body image. The analytic techniques will include a repeated measure analysis that includes one between-group factor (group) and three levels of time (baseline, at the completion of the GC program, and 12 months post-program completion).

CA/NCF