Calgary Community Conferencing
Summary of Evaluation Approaches
I. Process Focus
Purpose: to gather qualitative information on the following questions:
What do young people, victims, and community members experience through their
participation in Calgary Community Conferencing?
What do participants and stakeholders experience as strengths and weaknesses
in our program? According to participants and stakeholders, how can we improve our program?
Does the logic model (outcome component) we have developed fit with our
participants' experience of Calgary Community Conferencing.
Method: personal, taped interviews with participants, including:
young people
people who experienced harm
supporters of both young people and people who experience harm
school representatives/administrators
youth justice system professionals
other identified stakeholders
II. DESCRIPTIVE FOCUS
Purpose: to gather descriptive information to address the following questions:
Regarding what types of incidents are community conferences being held?
How many young people, people harmed, supporters, others have participated in conferencing?
What are the characteristics of the Restoration Agreements reached via conferencing?
How much time passes between the incident, referral, conference, sentencing, and restoration agreement completion?
What is the disposition outcome or school consequence for young people who have participated in the conferencing?
What re-offenses are young people participants in conferencing later convicted of?
Method: quantitative, file review
III. OUTCOME FOCUS
Purpose: to gather qualitative and quantitative information to address the following questions:
To what extent is Calgary Community Conferencing achieving its intended initial and intermediate benefits for participants, including -
Have relationships among participants been restored?
Has the young person demonstrated accountability for his/her actions?
Have the participants experienced a sense of closure regarding the incident that brought them to Community Conferencing?
Have the participants developed an enhanced sense of involvement in the justice process?
To what extent is Calgary Community Conferencing achieving its intended long term benefits for participants, including -
Is the incarceration rate lower among young people who participated in conferencing compared with those, convicted of similar offences, who did not participate in conferencing?
Is the re-offending rate lower among young people who participated in conferencing as compared with those, found guilty of similar offences, who did not participate in conferencing?
Do participants experience an enhanced connection to and responsibility for the justice process following conferencing?
Method: multi-stage, evolves as components are complete. May include:
Work with staff and draw on existing literature to develop program logic model.
Use results of interviews completed for process evaluation to inform further development of logic model.
Develop indicators to measure intended participant outcomes.
Develop reasonable, feasible quantitative methodology to administer outcome indicators.
IV. SATISFACTION FOCUS
Purpose: to document the degree of satisfaction with Calgary Community Conferencing among conference participants through addressing the questions:
What are our participants most satisfied with about conferencing?
What are our participants least satisfied with about conferencing?
What do participants suggest we change about conferencing?
How do participants rate various aspects of the conferencing experience?
Method: collate existing post conference questionnaires