William S Davidson

Michigan State University | MSU · Department of Psychology

Historically, minority youth have experienced harsher punishments and more negative outcomes than White youth even when risk assessment is used. The current study investigated the role of ethnicity in an understudied dispositional decision-program referral-and the outcomes associated with said referral using a sample of juvenile offenders (N = 2,67...

The increasing proportion of girls in the juvenile justice system has prompted courts to develop gender-responsive services. The present study examined data from a mid-sized county juvenile court to examine the effects of a group home intervention for girls. The study compared group home participants (n = 172) with girls who did not receive group h...

The commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is a growing domestic health and policy concern. Exploited girls may be at heightened risk for entering the juvenile justice system. The purpose of this study was to explore the needs of CSEC victims and resources available for system-involved girls. The data from this study included semistructu...

Understanding risk factors and treatment needs of juvenile drug offenders is important because of the myriad negative outcomes that befall juveniles involved in drugs. The Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory was used to explore differences between drug and nondrug offenders. Results suggested that substance use was not predictive of re...

Most criminogenic risk assessments are developed and empirically validated on samples of boys or samples comprised of mostly boys, and subsequently applied to girls. Using a sample of male (n = 1,267) and female (n = 453) probationers, the purpose of the current study was to examine the potentially differential performance of the Youth Level of Ser...

Risk assessments have been used in the juvenile justice system to predict future crime, identify youth needs, and inform case planning. Currently, the literature shows that juveniles are most often assessed when they enter court jurisdiction and this entry or initial risk assessment score is typically used to predict recidivism. The current study u...

Although structured assessments have helped standardize juvenile court processes by systematically measuring risk for recidivism, it has been argued that some assessments lack the ability to perform as a brief screener. This study explored the potential for the original 42-item Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) risk assessm...

Latinas are more likely to exhibit late stage breast cancers at the time of diagnosis and have lower survival rates compared to white women. A contributing factor may be that Latinas have lower rates of mammography screening. This study was guided by the Behavioral Model of Health Services Use to examine factors associated with mammography screenin...

Prisoner reentry programs continue to be developed and implemented to ease the process of transition into the community and to curtail fiscal pressures. This study describes and provides relapse and recidivism outcome findings related to a randomized trial evaluating a multimodal, community-based reentry program that prioritized substance abuse tre...

Objective This study describes and provides relapse and recidivism outcome findings related to an experimental trial evaluating the viability of frequent, random drug testing with consequences for use. Methods The sample consisted of 529 offenders released on parole. An experimental design with random assignment to one of three groups was employed...

Given service costs and evidence suggesting mixing young offenders of different risk levels increases recidivism, this study determined the extent to which differential disposition and risk determined subsequent recidivism. Furthermore, this study entailed a comparison of offense outcomes for informal probationers (n = 581) and formal probationers...

Risk assessments such as the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) that predict delinquency outcomes based on proximal risk factors may benefit from an incorporation of distal risk factors in their prediction models. This study utilized a juvenile probationer sample and block group SES data in exploring the differential predict...

Service-learning partnerships between universities and surrounding communities striving to create systems-level change must consider an emphasis in critical community service; a community centered paradigm where students are taught to work with communities to better understand contexts surrounding a social problem, as opposed to merely volunteering...

Using a longitudinal design, this study examined the relationship of a mother's prenatal representation of her child and her parenting behavior with that child at 1 year of age in a sample of women who were either exposed or not exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) (N = 164; M child age = 1.1 years, SD = .11 years; 52% male). Controlling for...

Michigan State University's Adolescent Project (MSUAP) was founded in the mid-1970s to create university-community collaboration through which innovative educational experiences would be offered, best practice intervention practices employed, and sound scientific methodology used to address the pressing social issue of juvenile delinquency. The pro...

This study validated a widely used risk assessment measure, the youth level of service/case management inventory (YLS/CMI), as a predictor of both delinquent reoffense and repeat truancy offenses in a court-involved truant sample (n = 308). The YLS/CMI performed adequately well at predicting delinquent reoffense, yielding an area under the curve (A...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) increases risk for depressive and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Most studies use a dose-response approach to examine the impact of IPV on mental health, but they often fail to explain mental health outcome specificity as well as to assess the impact of women's subjective appraisals. The present resea...

Risk assessments like the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) are widely used by juvenile justice systems to identify young offenders that are likely to reoffend. These instruments are also used for case management purposes, to determine areas of criminogenic risk that are amenable to intervention. This study explored the ris...

The present study examines the effects of a culturally relevant school-based intervention in promoting cultural assets (i.e., ethnic identity, collectivist orientation, racism awareness, and libratory youth activism) among a group of African American adolescent girls. The overall goal of the intervention was to promote cultural factors that can pro...

Effective case management of juvenile offenders requires differential treatment of juveniles that is based on clearly established patterns of need and risk ascertained by valid risk prediction tools. This study was the first attempt to determine whether profiles of offenders would provide valid and useful information beyond simple risk level (high,...

Justice systems depend on risk assessment instruments to identify juveniles who have the greatest likelihood to re-offend. This study was an attempt to validate the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory as a predictor of re-offense for young offenders between the ages of 10 and 16. Although 26% of youth in the sample (n = 328) re-offende...

This study examined whether maternal functioning mediated the relationship between domestic violence (DV) and infant externalizing behavior. Participants were 203 mother-infant dyads. Support was found for a partially mediated model in which maternal functioning mediated the relationship between current DV and infant externalizing behaviors. Past D...

This study examined the levels of depression reported by women who had used a domestic violence shelter. Depressive symptoms were assessed three times: immediately after shelter exit, 10 weeks thereafter, and 6 months later. Whereas 83% of the women reported at least mild depression on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression (CES-D) scale...

To determine whether infants have a traumatic response to intimate partner violence (male violence toward their female partner; IPV) experienced by their mothers, two questions were explored: (1) Is the number of infant trauma symptoms related to the infant's temperament and the mother's mental health? (2) Does severity of violence moderate those r...

This paper argues that the issues facing effective prevention programs when they embark on dissemination, implementation, and routinization have been largely ignored by the field. Through the example of the Adolescent Diversion Program, these issues are illustrated and discussed. Four sequential longitudinal experimental studies are summarized as a...

The relationships among women's experiences of domestic violence, community violence, and their mental health functioning were explored (N = 94). Social contagion theory was used to argue for the link between community violence and family violence. Results revealed that women's experiences of domestic violence were not related to community violence...

The Subtle and Overt Scale of Psychological Abuse (Marshall, 1999a) is a measure designed to examine previously unevaluated forms of psychological abuse. The scale was originally divided into seven subscales (overt: dominance, indifference, monitoring and discrediting; subtle: undermining, discounting, isolating). A sample of 172 women was used to...

This study investigated the relationship between family support and mental health in a community sample of pregnant women experiencing interpersonal partner violence (IPV). This study also examined how family support may differentially affect mental health in Black and White women experiencing IPV. A total of 110 participants (32 Black and 78 White...

The current study examined whether one-year-old infants whose mothers had been victims of domestic violence during the infant's lifetime (exposed; n = 30), compared to those who had not (not exposed; n = 59), would be more likely to experience distress in response to a simulated verbal conflict and whether amount of distress expressed would be infl...

The current article is an analysis of the research represented in American Journal of Community Psychology (AJCP) from 1993 to 1998, including a comparison to two previously published analytic reviews by Lounsbury et al. (J. W. Lounsbury, D. S. Leader, E. P. Meares, & M. P. Cook, 1980) and Speer et al. (P. Speer, A. Dey, P. Griggs, C. Gibson, B. Lu...

Using an empowerment evaluation approach, the Sexual Assault and Rape Prevention (SARP) Evaluation Project brought together university researchers, public health evaluators, state funders, and program staff to provide evaluation training and consultation to all state-funded rape prevention and victim services programs in Michigan. In this paper, th...

The research literature has demonstrated that battered women living in shelters experience impaired social support. This study examines this phenomenon among battered women living in the community. This study compared a group of pregnant battered women (n = 145) and a group of pregnant nonbattered women (n = 58) in terms of their structural [e.g.,...

The Adolescent Diversion Project (ADP) is an ecological program that seeks to promote family and community support and divert youth from further potentially labeling contact with the juvenile justice system. This manuscript reviews results from three phases of research that test program efficacy, compare intervention components, and examine staffin...

Women's (N=205) IPV experiences were assessed during their pregnancies, in the year before their pregnancies, and with their previous partners. The study explored whether psychosocial indicators and severity of violence could be predicted from a woman's continuity and history of IPV. Two 4-group classifications-partner (IPV experiences across partn...

The current study utilized an updated systemic model of social disorganization to investigate neighborhood effects on both positive and negative youth outcomes. Although empirical support for updated social disorganization models has increased in recent years, the field continues to rely too heavily on behavioral indicators of community social orga...

The aim of this research is to examine the effects of an intervention, focusing on the development of political empowerment, with university students. Undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of two conditions (intervention/ control) and were surveyed at two time points: before implementation of the intervention and upon completion of the inter...

Although many people with substance use problems are referred to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or Narcotics Anonymous (NA), few studies have examined characteristics of persons who comply with such referrals. In particular, little is known about self-help meeting attendance by persons with dual diagnoses. This study examined rates of AA and NA attendan...

Previous work in the field of substance use/misuse has suggested that client beliefs about addiction are quite diverse, and may influence the effectiveness of various treatment approaches. This paper presents an Addiction Belief Inventory (ABI) that was developed and evaluated to assess personal beliefs about addiction and substance use problems. T...

A randomized experimental design was used to assign participants to an integrated mental health and substance use treatment program or to standard hospital treatment. A multilevel, nonlinear model was used to estimate hospital treatment effects on days of alcohol use for persons with serious mental illness and substance use disorders over 18 months...

In recent years, new programs have emerged in hospital emergency departments to care for sexual assault victims. These programs, collectively known as Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) programs, improve the treatment of sexual assault victims through explicit attention to the medical, emotional, and legal needs of sexual assault survivors. Altho...

This paper describes the creation of a “Job Club” at Michigan State University to facilitate employment searches in Community Psychology. The goal of the Job Club was to provide a setting where graduating Ph.D. candidates could gain the skills necessary to be successful in both academic and non-academic job searches. The Job Club was student-driven...

Despite growing research interest in co-occurring psychiatric and substance misuse disorders, relatively few longitudinal studies have been conducted with dual diagnosis populations. Many of the longitudinal studies that have been done have experienced excessive attrition. Thus, investigators have noted that one of the primary difficulties of condu...

This study examined the effects of positive support and conflict that pregnant/ parenting adolescents received from their mothers. A typology of maternal support and conflict was established using cluster analytic procedures from data collected prenatally; prenatal cluster membership was related to significant differences on three measures of stres...

Following Sherman and Berk's (1984) study of the deterrent effects of arrest, researchers have continued to examine the role of the criminal justice system in responding to woman battering. Much of this research has used either victim reports or official records as data, even though victim reports and police records often disagree. The current stud...

Incidents of domestic violence are frequently not reported to police (e.g., Johnson, 1990; Langan & Innes, 1986; Roy, 1977), and people commonly assume that women's reasons for not calling about violence by a current or former partner are intrapersonal (e.g., shame, embarrassment, love). However, few researchers have asked battered women themselves...

The aim of this article is the description of effective evaluation partnerships of community based programs involving the evaluators, the organizations, and the communities. The evaluation may adress problems like domestic violence, juvenile delinquency, people with disabilities or contexts as schools, organizations, communities or policies. The ex...

Most of the research on social climate in psychiatric hospitals has addressed differences in client/staff perceptions, while neglecting the differences in social climate across types of wards. However, the literature on setting heterogeneity has also suggested that it might be important to examine differences between types of wards within a psychia...

Most of the research on social climate in psychiatric hospitals has addressed differences in client/staff perceptions, while neglecting the differences in social climate across types of wards. However, the literature on setting heterogeneity has also suggested that it might be important to examine differences between types of wards within a psychia...

This study examines the relationship between diagnosis and life functioning using the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) with 467 hospitalized individuals with mental illness and substance abuse problems. Persons diagnosed with schizophrenia were the best functioning group across most of the ASI domains except employment and psychiatric functioning. Mo...

This study examines the relationship between diagnosis and life functioning using the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) with 467 hospitalized individuals with mental illness and substance abuse problems. Persons diagnosed with schizophrenia were the best functioning group across most of the ASI domains except employment and psychiatric functioning. Mo...

Participant attrition poses a significant threat to the internal and external validity of panel studies, in part because participants who successfully complete all follow-up measurements often differ in significant ways from those respondents lost to attrition. The only certain safeguard against potential biases resulting from attrition is to ensur...

The present study investigated an intervention designed to increase battered women's social support and make their existing supports more responsive to their dire needs. It is part of a larger project that utilizes a longitudinal, experimental design to examine the effects, over a 2-year period, of an advocacy intervention on battered women's overa...

We assessed the incidence of sexual violence, physical violence, physical health symptoms, gynecological symptoms, and risk behaviors for contracting an STD or HIV infection in women who had used a shelter for women with abusive partners. In addition, we investigated the relationships between sexual violence and the frequency of physical health sym...

Although the literature on dual diagnosis has grown considerably over the last several years, report describing inpatient treatment models are less common. We describe some of the major treatment concerns in the dural diagnosis literature, such as using 12-step self-help programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or Narcotics Anonymous (NA), dealing w...

Presented the 6-month follow-up findings of an experimental intervention designed to provide postshelter advocacy services to women with abusive partners. The intervention involved randomly assigning half the research participants to receive the free services of an advocate, 4 to 6 hours per week, for the first 10 weeks postshelter. One hundred for...

Pregnant adolescents experience many simultaneous life transitions: normal adolescent development issues, parenting, and school transitions. Whether a transition into an alternative school is academically beneficial to the teen or not is a question of some debate. Our study examined the post-partum effects of an alternative education setting on aca...

Experimentally tested the hypotheses that (1) battered women are in need of numerous community resources upon exit from a domestic violence shelter, (2) working with advocates increases women's effectiveness in obtaining needed resources and social support, and (3) success in obtaining resources and social support increases women's levels of life s...

The current study presents the results of a needs assessment of 141 women exiting an emergency shelter for women with abusive partners. Extensive in-person interviews were conducted. Results indicate that battered women need numerous community resources upon their shelter exit, including legal assistance, employment, and housing. Race, age, and whe...

Examined the short-term impact of providing advocacy services to women leaving battered women's shelters. The study employed a true longitudinal experimental design. Women in the advocacy condition received intensive one-on-one services with trained paraprofessional advocates. Advocates assisted women in accessing needed community resources. Women...

1 Historical Context.- 2 Major Theoretical Positions.- 3 Empirical History of Treatment Efficacy.- 4 Theories of Delinquency Intervention and Treatment Research Strategies.- 5 Study I and Study II: Research Methods.- 6 Study I: Intervention Process and Outcome Results.- 7 Study II: Intervention Process and Outcome Results.- 8 Assessment of the Volu...

The current study examined the difficulties inherent in using an experimental, longitudinal design to determine the effects of an advocacy program designed to increase battered women's access to community resources. The current research employed a multitude of techniques to follow battered women over the first year following their stay at a shelter...

We surveyed the graduate training and employment experiences of 177 current students and 152 recent graduates from 39 psychology programs. Of interest were differences among applied social, community and community-clinical programs. Results suggested that these training programs represented a continuum of research, community, and clinical interests...

We surveyed the graduate training and employment experiences of 177 current students and 152 recent graduates from 39 psychology programs. Of interest were differences among applied social, community and community-clinical programs. Results suggested that these training programs represented a continuum of research, community, and clinical interests...

The results from Study I confirmed that the intervention model of behavioral contracting and child advocacy reduced officially recorded delinquent behavior to a greater extent than treatment-as-usual by a juvenile court. The major purpose of Study II was to examine the generalizability of this treatment by varying volunteer types to include communi...

Having assessed the impact of the Adolescent Diversion Project on the youth and the change agents and explored the relationship between process variables and outcome, we now turn our attention to systemic impact. This chapter presents a discussion of the four models used to assess systemic impact. First, an overview sets the context from which thes...

Theoretical approaches to explanations of troubled youth have closely paralleled more general deviance theory and sociopolitical trends (Elliot et al., 1985; Empey, 1982). It has been difficult to discern whether deviance theories evolved from independent scientific thinking or emerged as explanations for the preferences of the policies of the soci...

Concern over crime and juvenile delinquency has remained prominent in American society. In annual surveys conducted from 1972 through 1984, American citizens were asked, “Is there more crime in this area than there was a year ago, or less?” In each year except one, the most common response was “more crime,” indicating the belief that concern about...

The methods used to implement and evaluate the two studies will be presented. Study I is first described in considerable detail. Because many of the procedures for Study II were similar to those of Study I, only the differences will be presented for Study II. The focus of the methods in this chapter is on the youth participants. This section begins...

This volume began with multiple agenda. The research surrounding the Adolescent Diversion Project was concerned with processes and effects at the level of individual youth and their families, the selection of and effects on change agents, and impact on social control systems. The research surrounding the project was focused on understanding the cha...

The Action Condition (AC), Action Condition Family Focus (AC—FF), and Action Condition Court Setting (AC—CS) examined the impact of behavioral contracting and child advocacy within a broad spectrum of domains (AC), with the family as the central focus (AC—FF) and under the auspices of the juvenile court (AC—CS). The Relationship Condition (RC) expl...

In this chapter, the results of four models for exploring systemic impact are first examined. Following a presentation of the results of each of the four models, the implications or these findings will be discussed.

In this chapter, the interventions used by the Adolescent Diversion Project are examined from an individual perspective. This means that rather than examining differences between groups of subjects who received similar treatments, individual youth—volunteer pairs are the unit of analysis. Several reasons prompted this approach. First, each youth is...

An additional aspect of the present research concerns the individuals recruited to work with the juvenile delinquents. The use of volunteers, or nonprofessionals, in community interventions has been promoted in the field of community psychology for the last two decades (Rappaport, 1977; Sobey, 1970; Zax & Specter, 1974). The emphasis on using nonpr...

This chapter discusses how the Adolescent Diversion Project attempted to bridge the gap between delinquency intervention theories and treatment research methods. Thus it introduces both the intervention theories and the research methods used by the project. Because of the complexity of the issues we tried to address, two distinct research strategie...

This chapter presents a comprehensive review of the literature concerned with the efficacy of interventions with delinquent youth. This review was undertaken in order to put the research reported in Chapters 4 through 11 in its empirical context. This review used the specific methods of formal meta-analysis. After a brief presentation of the need f...

The purpose of this volume is to present the whole story of our research program on alternative interventions with delinquent youth. It is our goal to describe the development of an alternative intervention model, to examine its salient processes, to provide a test of its relative effective­ ness, and to give a description of its systemic impacts....

This reaction to the Wicker paper on substantive theorizing provides a summary of salient features of the approach. It is suggested that more detail about the implementation of substantive theorizing is needed in the future. Further it is argued that there is a need to amalgamate the substantive, conceptual, and methodological facets of research.

Concern over adult crime and juvenile delinquency is prominent in American society. In annual surveys conducted from 1972 through 1984, U.S. citizens were asked “Is there more crime in this area than there was a year ago, or less?” In each year save one, the most frequent response was “More Crime,” indicating the belief that crime has been increasi...

Past reviews of the treatment of juvenile offenders have concluded that “nothing works.” More recently, some reviewers have concluded that treatment concepts are not necessarily ineffective, but, instead, research methodology and treatment integrity have been inadequate. The present review looks at the treatment of adjudicated juvenile offenders fr...

A frequently advocated strategy for increasing the efficiency of child abuse prevention programs is to deliver prevention services to "high-risk" populations. This article critically reviews procedures for the reliable and valid assessment of child abuse potential within an ecological perspective. Factors that limit the usefulness of child abuse ri...

The arena of social program implementation has been divided over the issue of whether new programs should be disseminated and implemented with fidelity (i.e., with close correspondence to the original validated model) or implemented according to the idiosyncratic needs, values, and resources of the local adopting organization. To empirically examin...

The elimination of a state “good time” policy allowed an examination of the effects of this policy on inmate behavior. Only inmates convicted of certain offenses were affected and the change was not retroactive, creating control groups not affected by the policy change. Data sources included misconduct reports (for relatively minor incidents), crit...

The modified Research, Development, and Diffusion (RD&D) model, as exemplified by change agents in federal organizations, was examined as a viable strategy for disseminating social program innovations. This study of seven nationally disseminated education and criminal justice projects was designed to refine the methodology for measuring innovation...

This study presents the results of a longitudinal experiment focused on the relative efficacy of varying treatments for juvenile offenders (N = 213). Four interventions using nonprofessionals were contrasted with an attention-placebo group and a treatment-as-usual control group. Systematic manipulation checks indicated a high degree of integrit