Sunday, 16 January 2005 - 8:45 AM

This presentation is part of: Organization of Social Services

Integrating Empirical Practice Procedures: Realist Evaluation Of Building Bridges Interfaith Project in Lancashire, England

PURPOSE

The paper reports on the integration of empirical practice and realist evaluation procedures in a government-funded Lancashire Children’s Fund project that addresses social, cultural and religious diversity amongst school children and their families with the overall aim of improving community cohesion. The Project aims to improve children's attitudes to each other and to teach respect for others' views / faiths, and their attitudes towards crime.

METHOD The method included the integration of single-subject designs into the team’s practice to systematically track outcomes using standardised measures, and the use of comparison group designs. Procedures were also developed and integrated to enable the systematic tracking of factors in the circumstances of service users that may influence the outcomes, as well as the content of the interventions, using a SPSS database. Binary logistic regression models were tested to investigate what interventions work and in what circumstances.

FINDINGS This evaluation is based on the project’s database for the period August 03 to February 04 inclusive. The Project provided six-week courses to 783 pupils in 16 schools in Colne / Nelson / Brierfield, with year groups ranging from 5 to 7. 51.8% were male, and 48.4% female. The users’ ethnic groups were identified as 59% British White, 40% Asian Pakistani, and 1% other ethnic groups.

A questionnaire was developed by the project staff in consultation with the evaluation team, called the Child Attitude Scale (CAT), consisting of five subscales, each with two questions, on faith, diversity, anti-bullying, values and empathy, and crime. A reliability test was carried out with 45 children, and the test-retest alpha was found to be .70. The questionnaire is used at the beginning and at the end of the six-week courses, enabling a comparison between the baseline and post-intervention scores.

Out of the 538 children a, comparison of the baseline and post-intervention scores indicated that more young people improved their attitude (45.2%) in this period, although nearly a third (32.7%) became worse. The Spearman test indicated that there was a significant correlation between change in the CAT scores and:

v The users’ ethnic group. 51% of the Asian Pakistanis improved, as against 40% of British White children.

v Baseline CAT scores. Those with lower baseline scores tended to improve, and in particular those with a baseline score of 15 or lower all improved.

When the binary logistic regression method was used, it was found that the decisive factor was the lower baseline score, and that those with lower scores were 1.3 times more likely to improve, indicating the project’s effectiveness in changing attitudes in a more positive direction where the baseline scores were the worst.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE However, a third of the young people with better baseline scores actually became worse, indicating that the intervention should address the needs of these young people who appear to have better baseline scores. The project is more effective with ethnic minorities, and therefore the intervention needs to be developed for meeting the needs of the indigenous families.

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