A Framework for Evaluating Interventions for Adolescent Dating Violence

Abstract

As we saw in Chapter 5, the empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of primary interventions to change attitudes or ADV behaviours is mixed. However, understanding whether the intervention impacts on the outcome variable of choice is only one aspect to conducting successful evaluations. If interventions for ADV are going to be implemented, then we have an ethical obligation to ensure that they are designed to reflect evidence regarding what works. In Chapter 6 we introduced the Intervention Mapping (Bartholomew et al., 2011) approach, fundamental to which is the integration of evaluation protocol design within the intervention design phase. By combining intervention and evaluation design we can guarantee that the outcome and impact measures used actually reflect the intervention framework developed. In this chapter, the potential utility of embedding the IM PRECEED-PROCEDE model within Rossi, Freeman, and Lipsey’s (2004) Comprehensive Evaluation framework (Bowen & Gilchrist, 2004) is examined. The aim is to provide a comprehensive evaluation framework detailing the main issues that practitioners and evaluation scientists need to consider when evaluating ADV interventions specifically.