NCJ Number
87473
Journal
Journal of Offender Counseling, Services and Rehabilitation Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Dated: (Spring 1982) Pages: 43-60
Date Published
1983
Length
18 pages
Annotation
Use of an experimental design to assess a vocational rehabilitation program for juveniles produced nonsignificant results.
Abstract
The attempt to improve on earlier studies' methodological shortcomings produced a research design that incorporated a before and after test of an experimental and a control group, with subjects matched, paired, and randomly assigned. The design was developed and applied to data on 87 experimental and control pairs of delinquent boys from intake through followup. The results of the comparison of experimental and control groups indicated that vocational rehabilitation did not enhance significantly delinquent boys' vocational development, self-esteem, and attitude towards authority, and made no significant difference in reducing recidivism. Possible explanations for the negative results may be that the program did not provide sufficiently strong stimulus to counteract negative influences in the boys' lives, that the high counselor turnover and variance in counseling quality may have had a detrimental effect on the project, and that the large intragroup differences in test scores and adaptive data may have overwhelmed any intergroup differences. Tabular data and 36 references are given.