Service Outcomes Action Research (SOAR)

David E. Duffee, School of Criminal Justice
Dana Peterson, School of Criminal Justice
Megan Kurlychek, School of Criminal Justice
Heather Larkin, School of Social Welfare
Amanda B. Nickerson, Dept of Educational & Counseling Psychology
Project Co-Directors

Service Outcomes Action Research (SOAR) is a national leader in developing practitioner-generated information for evidence based practice with youth and their families. An extensive and on-going search of practice and research literature has uncovered no other program in the country providing similar levels of knowledge about the RTC treatment process and its results. The goal of SOAR is to provide treatment practitioners with direct knowledge of how agencies' work affects client outcomes on a regular, periodic basis, using the clinical data routinely recorded about each family in each program. Providing staff with direct and frequent evidence of program impact on client results is absolutely critical to the development of effective family and youth treatment, which is too sensitive, complex, and interactive to be guided effectively by one-time impact studies or the adoption of "best practices."

The SOAR project:

--Includes a highly participative yet scientifically rigorous approach to service providers' elaboration of their theory-of-change in a logic model of client characteristics, services, and outcomes.
--Provides for the development of a complete measurement model for each program so that providers' clinical records are redesigned to permit continuous impact evaluation.
--Measures treatment processes and client outcomes at multiple points in time, both during and after treatment, providing stronger evidence of causality than before-after designs.
--Measures staff activities, and program processes as these are applied to the individual client, allowing identification and control of variation in treatment process within a program.
--Assists staff in reviewing findings about these client-program-outcomes connections so that appropriate modifications may be made to programming in an ongoing, incremental, and systematic fashion.

Sponsoring agencies
LaSalle School, Saint Anne Institute

Staff
Yufan (Eugene) Huang
Camela M. Steinke
Aline Miraglia
Jacquelyn Rafferty
Vanessa Panfil
Raquel Moriarty
Angela Moyer

Publications
Cunningham, Scott. (Forthcoming). "Voices From the Field: Practitioner Reactions to Collaborative Research Initiatives." Accepted by Action Research.

Cunningham, Scott and David Duffee. (Forthcoming). "Styles of Evidence-Based Practice in the Child Welfare System." Accepted by Evidence-Based Social Work.

Cunningham, Scott, David E. Duffee, Yufan Huang, Camela M. Steinke, Toni Naccaratto (Forthcoming). "On the Meaning and Measurement of Engagement in Youth Residential Treatment Centers." Accepted by Research on Social Work Practice.

Englebrecht, Christine, Dana Peterson, Aaron Scherer, and Toni Naccarato, 2008. "It's Not My Fault: Acceptance of Responsibility as a Component of Engagement." Children and Youth Services Review 30(4): 466-484.

Smith, Brends, David E. Duffee, Camela M. Steinke, Yufan Huang, Heather Larkin. (Forthcoming). "Outcomes in Residential Treatment for Youth: The Role of Early Engagement." Accepted by Children and Youth Services Review.

Wolff, Bill and Rick Riccio, 2004. "A Win-Win Situation." Alliance for Children and Families Magazine 4(2):21-24.

Contact information
Telephone: (518) 591-8760

E-mail: duffee@albany.edu

FAX: (518) 442-5603

Write:

SOAR Project

Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center

University at Albany, SUNY

135 Western Avenue, DR-241

Albany, NY 12222