Constant and Never Ending Improvement Evaluation Report
NYAP solicited an external research team, Dr. Chenelle A. Jones and Dr. JoNataye Prather, from Ohio Dominican University to evaluate the effectiveness of the agency’s homegrown CANEI program. CANEI, a wraparound based program, has been implemented as an intervention model for youth with current or past involvement in the juvenile justice system. Jones and Prather set out to measure the impact of the program on moral disengagement, a proven protective factor, and juvenile delinquency recidivism (Jones & Prather, 2014).
Using a pre-test/post-test model, non-parametric tests were performed to assess group differences in moral disengagement before and after participation in the CANEI program. Bivariate analyses were performed to examine the relationship between CANEI engagement and juvenile offending. Moral disengagement surveys consisted of 32-items measured by a Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Internal reliability of the moral disengagement survey for the current sample was equal to .779. The pretest was completed by participants during week 1 of the CANEI program and the post-test was completed during week 26 of the CANEI program.
Out of 329 youth, a sample size of 158 was for complete pre- and post-test moral disengagement scores and recidivism data. After controlling for completeness of data, the resulting sample consisted of 171 youth. Eighty-eight youth comprised the treatment group and were engaged in CANEI programs in Georgia, Ohio, and Illinois from 2011 through 2013.
Eighty-three youth comprised the control group and were placed on probation in 2011 through Franklin County Juvenile Court. The control group, used only to examine the effectiveness of the CANEI program at preventing delinquency, was analyzed using a binary logistic regression. Parental consent and youth assent forms were completed by guardians and youth who were chosen for participation in the study. The final youth sample was 63% male and 37% female. Additionally, racial groups included in the study were 16% White, 58% African American, 23% Latinx, 2% African, and 1% other. During a one-year follow-up, 84% of youth (N=74) who were engaged in the CANEI program remained free of any new juvenile justice involvement. The 16% (N=14) of youth engaged in the CANEI program who recidivated were comprised of 72% (N=10) were African American, 21% (N=3) were White, and 7% (N=1) were Latinx.
A binary logistic regression analysis was performed to compare 12 month recidivism outcomes of the treatment and control groups. A dummy variable was created to represent the difference between the CANEI condition (coded 1) and the control condition (coded 2). The results of this analysis, using the Wald (W) statistic [B 1.870, SE 0.368, W(1) 25.828, p = .000, Exp(B) 6.488], indicated that the recidivism rate in the CANEI condition (16%) significantly differed from the control (55%) condition. Thus, the present findings support the hypothesis that the CANEI program is an effective program for delinquency prevention (Jones & Prather, 2014).
