I am reaching back out to update the field on our progress with improving the CrimeSolutions review process and website.
I am pleased to share that we have made significant progress since we first announced these changes back in February, with more work well on its way.
Our biggest change lies in a major overhaul of the program scoring instrument. Rather than assigning a single rating to a program, we will be rating programs by outcome (allowing for multiple outcomes and ratings per program), in line with how we rate practices. With this change we hope to reduce the subjectivity of the rating process and create a more transparent system whereby positive significant effects are not obscured by nonsignificant effects.
The new rating instrument has been developed and we are pilot testing it to assess its reliability. Later this month we will begin training our senior researchers on the new instrument and process; in August we will hold training sessions for all our study reviewers.
We are on target to begin reviewing and rereviewing programs using the new instrument this Fall and have a prioritized list of programs to rereview. We are carefully weighing the ratio of new program reviews and rereviews of currently rated programs we will undertake.
As we have rated over 700 programs, the rereview process will be spread out over multiple years, and we are considering which programs will not be rereviewed with the new instrument. If we do not rereview every program, our plan is to keep the current program profiles available for those programs. During the rereview process, all the current program profiles will remain available. We are developing a single search feature allowing users to search across all programs, regardless of how they were rated.
To accommodate this major overhaul, we also are making changes to the CrimeSolutions website. We will offer a sneak peak of the new program profile pages later in the Fall and look forward to your feedback.
These and other CrimeSolutions updates will be presented at public meetings to explain the changes in more detail and garner feedback. We will hold meetings in multiple venues, including the upcoming NIJ 2024 Research Conference.
I also welcome any thoughts or suggestions you may have. They can be submitted to [email protected].
We rely on you for both content and feedback on CrimeSolutions and recognize that our best path forward to improving this valuable resource is informed by your engagement and input.
With best regards,
Nancy La Vigne, Ph.D.
Director, National Institute of Justice