Deborah Daro, Principal Investigator
2009

Chapin Hall is conducting a cross-site evaluation of the Duke Endowment’s Child Abuse Prevention Initiative, which includes the Durham Family Initiative in Durham, North Carolina, and the Strong Communities Initiative in Greenville, South Carolina. Their common objectives are to reduce rates of child abuse, improve parenting practices and behaviors, strengthen community service systems, and improve a community’s capacity to protect children and support parents. Chapin Hall’s role as evaluator is to document the extent to which each site is making progress toward these core objectives and provide a comparative analysis of the relative differences in each project’s trajectory and potential for replication.

The central component of Chapin Hall’s assessment involves repeated household surveys within the intervention and control communities. The initial baseline survey was completed in 2004 with a second survey in 2007. In addition, Chapin Hall is conducting secondary analysis of administrative and survey data compiled by the individual sites as well as a series of targeted interviews and observations with various stakeholders familiar with each site’s activities. Chapin Hall has completed a midpoint assessment and has outlined a set of next steps to guide the initiative as it moves forward.