Title: Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships: Evaluations of Grants to
Encourage Arrest Policies for Domestic Violence.
Series: NIJ Solicitation
Author: NIJ
Published: National Institute of Justice, April 1999
Subject: Program evaluations, domestic violence, and criminal justice
system 
12 pages
23,000 bytes

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U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
National Institute of Justice

National Institute of Justice
Solicitation
Jeremy Travis, Director

April 1999

Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships: Evaluations of Grants to Encourage 
Arrest Policies for Domestic Violence

APPLICATION DEADLINE:
June 30, 1999

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U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
810 Seventh Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20531

Janet Reno
Attorney General

Raymond C. Fisher
Associate Attorney General

Laurie Robinson
Assistant Attorney General

Noel Brennan
Deputy Assistant Attorney General

Jeremy Travis
Director, National Institute of Justice

For grant and funding information contact:

Department of Justice Response Center:
800-421-6770

Office of Justice Programs
World Wide Web Site:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov

National Institute of Justice
World Wide Web Site:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij

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Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships: Evaluations of Grants to Encourage
Arrest Policies for Domestic Violence

I. Introduction

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ), in collaboration with the Office of
Justice Programs' Violence Against Women Office (VAWO), is soliciting
proposals for researcher-practitioner partnerships to evaluate practitioner
collaborations through the Grants to Encourage Arrest Polices under the
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The purpose of these researcher-
practitioner partnerships is to provide jurisdictions receiving funds under
the Grants to Encourage Arrest with the resources to implement locally
based evaluations that are responsive to the needs of the jurisdiction and
that contribute to our understanding of the issues nationally. Specifically,
this solicitation provides support for locally conducted process evaluations
of projects supported by the Grants to Encourage Arrest. The process
evaluations should provide a thorough descriptive analysis of the issues
being addressed by the project and the activities undertaken in formulating
the project. 

Contingent upon continued appropriations in the future and NIJ's receipt of
funding, a subsequent solicitation will request proposals from applicants
who have been previously awarded a local process evaluation to conduct
outcome/impact evaluations. Outcome evaluations will measure the effects
of a program against the goals it set out to accomplish.

The researcher-practitioner process evaluations will be funded at up to
$75,000 each for up to 18 months. It is anticipated that up to six awards
will be made available for evaluations in individual jurisdictions. The
evaluation teams should include researchers, practitioners and victim
advocates. The teams may focus on issues related to any of the program
purposes or the Special Interest Categories of the Grants to Encourage
Arrest Policies described below. The evaluations will be supported by
cooperative agreements between the grantee and NIJ. NIJ, with input from
VAWO, will consult with awardees concerning the nature of the
collaboration, the specific research issue to be addressed as part of the
collaboration, research approach, and other factors.

II. Background 

Title IV of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994
is the Violence Against Women Act. The Act responds to the needs of
millions of women who are the victims of violence each year. It also
responds to the need for fundamental changes in addressing violence
against women from diverse, traditionally underserved populations,
including women of color, immigrant women, disabled women, women in
same-sex relationships, and elderly women. 

The Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies is authorized under Chapter 3,
part U of the Violence Against Women Act. For fiscal year (FY) 1999,
Congress appropriated $34 million to the U.S. Department of Justice,
Office of Justice Programs for the program, which is being administered
by VAWO. The purpose of this program is to encourage States, Indian
tribal governments, and units of local government to treat domestic
violence as a serious violation of criminal law. The program assumes that
the arrest of a batterer will leverage the coercive and persuasive power of
the criminal justice system to ensure victim safety and manage the
behavior of abusive, violent offenders.

The Violence Against Women Act directs that Grants to Encourage Arrest
Policies be used to:

--Implement mandatory arrest or pro-arrest programs and policies in police
departments, including mandatory arrest programs or pro-arrest programs
and policies for protection order violations;

--Develop policies and training programs in police departments and other
criminal justice agencies to improve tracking of cases involving domestic
violence;

--Centralize and coordinate police enforcement, prosecution, probation,
parole or judicial responsibility of cases in groups or units of police
officers, prosecutors, probation and parole officers or judges; 

--Coordinate computer tracking systems to ensure communication between
police, prosecutors, and both criminal and family courts;

--Strengthen legal advocacy service programs for victims of domestic
violence by providing complete information and support for a victim of
domestic violence as the case against her abuser moves through the
criminal justice system; and

--Educate judges and others responsible for handling domestic violence
cases, in criminal, tribal, and other courts about domestic violence to
ensure victim safety and offender accountability through proactive judicial
management.

The Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies funds are also being used to
support promising approaches that respond to domestic violence within the
Special Interest Categories outlined below.

--Enforcement of protection orders and implementation of the full faith
and credit provision of the Violence Against Women Act.

--Domestic violence courts that employ frequent and proactive judicial
monitoring, sanctions, and intensive supervision to manage offender
behavior and ensure victim safety.

--Community-driven initiatives to address violence against women among
diverse, traditionally underserved populations.

--Partnerships between the business community and the criminal justice
system to enhance the safety of women in the community.

--Community policing to reduce and prevent violence against women.

--Initiatives within police departments to address the problem of police
officers who are perpetrators of domestic violence.

--Collaboration among advocates working with victims of domestic
violence, domestic violence programs, child protection services agencies,
and criminal justice agencies to provide support and resources to battered
women and their children.

--The development and implementation of coordinated initiatives to
address incidents of stalking occurring in a domestic violence context.

Currently, the Violence Against Women Office has 183 grants under the
Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies Program. 

Further information about the Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies is
available on VAWO's web page. The Office's web page address is:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/vawgo. Information regarding the program can
also be obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice Response Center at
800-421-6770, or in the Washington, D.C. area at 202-307-1480.

III. Areas of Research Required

Proposals are solicited for researcher-practitioner partnerships to conduct
process evaluations of specific programs or initiatives falling under any of
the Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies program purposes or Special
Interest Categories. It is anticipated that up to 6 awards will be made
available for local process evaluations in individual jurisdictions. Each of
these evaluations will be funded for up to $75,000 for a period of up to 18
months. The applicant may be either an advocacy group, practitioner
agency, research organization, or an academic institution. 

The process evaluations must address partnerships between advocates and
criminal justice practitioners who are implementing local initiatives
through the Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies. To the extent possible,
abused women, survivors of domestic violence, and other knowledgeable
and relevant community members should be involved in the evaluation
design and process. The process evaluation should describe the approach
the jurisdiction has taken to achieve a coordinated community response to
domestic violence; and document the history of the collaborative
relationship among the practitioner partners.

In addition to the requirements mentioned above, a proposal for the local
process evaluation should include descriptions of each of the following
components: the composition and functioning of the researcher-
practitioner partnership, the research issues that will be addressed and
research approaches that will be used, and sustainability of the researcher-
practitioner collaboration once Federal funding has ended. Each of these
components is described in detail, below.

Partnership Composition

At a minimum, the research-practitioner collaboration must include
criminal justice officials; nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations
serving victims of domestic violence; victim advocates; and a researcher.
The researcher must have experience in conducting studies on domestic
violence.  Because understanding the demographic and cultural
dimensions of the affected jurisdiction is important to problem
identification, development and implementation of strategies to address
the issue presented, performance measures developed for programmatic
assessment, and interpretation of evaluation findings, the researcher needs
to be locally-based. In addition, the necessity of regular meetings between
the researcher and practitioners on a limited budget requires a locally-
based researcher. Locally-based should be interpreted as being within the
affected jurisdiction or a neighboring jurisdiction.

Beyond these requirements the composition of the partnership is not
limited. A critical element of the application is that it reflect a genuine
collaboration regardless of who may have initiated the effort. The
application must clearly demonstrate a commitment to the research-
practitioner partnership on the part of all parties involved. 

Functioning of the Partnership

Specifying the role of each member of the researcher-practitioner
partnership is important in ensuring high quality and technically feasible
proposals. The basic partnership concept is that a researcher will work
cooperatively with criminal justice officials, victim services providers,
advocates, and abused women and survivors to develop data-driven
testable solutions and evaluations. If criminal justice officials, service
providers and advocates are to gain new skills in assessing and measuring
their programs and innovations, they must be directly involved with the
on-going research and evaluation design and development process. If  
researchers are to understand what goals and purposes service providers,
advocates, and criminal justice officials seek to achieve and what
measures of success will be credible, researchers must work closely with
service providers, advocates, and criminal justice officials. When partners
function as equal contributors, skills, responsibility for outcomes, and
motivation to fulfill responsibilities will develop to ensure high quality,
credible research results.

The ultimate goal of these collaborations is to benefit all parties to the
research-practitioner partnerships during and beyond the Federal funding
period. The partnerships should provide criminal justice system
practitioners, victim service providers and advocates with a resource for
policy-relevant program evaluations. The partnerships should also afford
researchers the means and opportunity to contribute to the growing body
of knowledge that can be used to effectively address violence against
women.

Research Issues and Approaches

Applicants are invited to design research-practitioner partnerships that will
address issues related to the program purpose areas or Special Interest
Categories of the Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies. Researchers and
practitioners should collaboratively develop the specific research goals and
questions that will be addressed as part of the process evaluation. The
research questions being proposed should be of priority to the jurisdiction.
The knowledge to be gained should have direct application to the affected
jurisdictions.

Applicants may propose several research issues and research approaches to
the process evaluation. Subsequently, one of these research issues and
approaches should be fully developed for the process evaluation. 

Proposals should include a time and task outline to display how the
proposed work will be accomplished. The advantage of the time and task
outline is that it demonstrates the separate roles and involvement of each
of the researcher-practitioner partnership members and ensures that all
partners can reasonably expect to accomplish the objectives of the
evaluation.

In addition, applicants must also include in their proposals a description of
how the partnerships will protect the human subjects of the research, and
confidentiality of the research data. The human subjects and
confidentiality issues must be addressed through submission of a privacy
certificate required by Federal regulations of all NIJ grantees, and if
necessary, approval of the proposal by an Institutional Review Board
(IRB).

Since the time allowed to respond to this solicitation is limited and the
research partnerships may be newly established, the early stages of the
process evaluation will allow for refinement of the research design.

In order to prepare for potential outcome evaluations, process evaluation
designs are encouraged to:

--identify some meaningful comparison group if feasible (a comparable
group of individuals who have not participated in the project); 

--develop and use reliable and valid measurement tools (questionnaires
that provide similar results among different populations and contain
questions that accurately measure issues of interest); and

--collect essential outcome measures from the beginning (measures that
can be used to assess the impact of your program).

Sustainability of the Researcher-Practitioner Partnership

One purpose of the researcher-practitioner collaborations is to encourage
an on-going relationship between local criminal justice officials, service
providers, advocates, and researchers. In order to ensure that planning has
begun to sustain researcher-practitioner partnerships after Federal funding
has concluded, the proposal must contain a description of how the partners
propose this might be accomplished and what they will do to facilitate the
continued relationship.

Technical Assistance

All researcher-practitioner partnership teams supported under this
solicitation will be required to attend one or two meetings during the
course of the grant. The purpose of these meetings is to provide the
partners with technical assistance on the process evaluation and the
researcher-practitioner collaboration itself. These meetings will also afford
the partnership teams the opportunity to learn from one another and
domestic violence experts about issues being addressed, strategies
adopted, and successes and challenges experienced in responding to
domestic violence. The costs of these Federally-sponsored meetings will
be covered by additional non-grant funds.

Methodological Considerations. In this solicitation, the need for
innovation, particularly on qualitative measures and culturally sensitive
measures, and the need for different levels of data is acknowledged.  In
preparing for subsequent outcome evaluations, measures that go beyond
reoffending need to be considered and utilized. New outcome measures
could address stress, economic independence, quality of life, offending
with a new partner, and victim and community safety. Also, the use of data
from a variety of systems (e.g. criminal justice, social services) is
encouraged. 

Dissemination of Results. NIJ is interested in expeditious and innovative
methods to disseminate the results from all projects supported under this
solicitation. Methods that would supplement the more traditional forms of
dissemination are encouraged. Results of projects are expected to be
reported to NIJ as they become available, and, at a minimum, through
semi-annual progress reports. Applicants should provide a discussion of
the types of reports or products that would become available over the
course of the project.

Attendance at an annual meeting for NIJ grantees is required. This meeting
provides NIJ grantees the opportunity to present the findings from their
projects as well as learn about the other violence against women and
family violence research NIJ is supporting. Applicants should budget
travel and per diem expenses for a trip to Washington, D.C., for each year
of the grant to participate in these grantee meetings.

IV. How to Apply 

Those interested in submitting proposals in response to this solicitation
must complete the required application forms and submit related required
documents. (See below for how to obtain application forms and guides for
completing proposals.) Applicants must include the following
information/forms to quality for consideration:

--Standard Form (SF) 424--application for Federal assistance. The budget
amount for the entire length of the project must be placed in box 15 of the
SF 424.

--Assurances

--Certifications Regarding Lobbying, Debarment, Suspension and Other
Responsibility Matters; and Drug-Free Workplace Requirements (one
form)

--Disclosure of Lobbying Activities

--Budget Detail Worksheet

--Budget Narrative

--Negotiated indirect rate agreement (if appropriate)

--Names and affiliations of all key persons from applicant and
subcontractor(s), advisors, consultants, and advisory board members.
Include name of principal investigator, title, organizational affiliation (if
any), department (if institution of higher education), address, phone, and
fax 

--Proposal abstract

--Table of contents

--Program narrative or technical proposal

--Privacy certificate

--References

--Letters of cooperation from organizations collaborating in the research
project

--Resumes

--Appendixes, if any (e.g., list of previous NIJ awards, their status, and
products [in NIJ or other publications])

Proposal abstract. The proposal abstract, when read separately from the
rest of the application, is meant to serve as a succinct and accurate
description of the proposed work. Applicants must concisely describe the
research goals and objectives, research approach, and methods for
achieving the goals and objectives. Summaries of past accomplishments
are to be avoided, and proprietary/confidential information is not to be
included. Length is not to exceed 400 words. Use the following two
headers:

Project Goals and Objectives:

Proposed Research Design and Methodology:

Page limit. For grants exceeding $50,000 the limit is 30 double-spaced
pages. For grants under $50,000, the limit is 15 double-spaced pages. Note
this limit applies only to the "Program Narrative" part of the application,
but not to the other components listed above.

Due date. Completed proposals must be received at the National Institute
of Justice by the close of business on June 30, 1999. Extensions of this
deadline will not be permitted.

Award period. The award period for these cooperative agreements will be
up to 18 months.

Number of awards. NIJ anticipates supporting up to 6 cooperative
agreements under this solicitation. 

Award amount. Awards totaling up to $75,000 each will be made available
under this NIJ solicitation.

Applying. Two packets need to be obtained: (1) application forms
(including a sample budget worksheet) and (2) guidelines for submitting
proposals (including requirements for proposal writers and requirements
for grant recipients). To receive them, applicants can:

--Access the Justice Information Center on the web: 
http://www.ncjrs.org/fedgrant.htm#NIJ

or the NIJ web site:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/NIJ/funding.htm 

These web sites offer the NIJ application forms and guidelines as
electronic files that may be downloaded to a personal computer.

--Request hard copies of the forms and guidelines by mail from the
National Criminal Justice Reference Service at 800-851-3420 or from the
Department of Justice Response Center at 800-421-6770 (in the
Washington, D.C. area, at 202-307-1480).

--Request copies by fax. Call 800-851-3420 and select option 1, then
option 1 again for NIJ. Code is 1023.

Guidance and information. Applicants who wish to receive additional
guidance and information may contact the U.S. Department of Justice
Response Center at 800-421-6770. Center staff can provide assistance or
refer applicants to an appropriate NIJ professional. Applicants may, for
example, wish to discuss their prospective research topics with the NIJ
professional staff.

Send 3 copies (one with original signatures) of completed forms to:

National Institute of Justice
Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships: Evaluations of Grants to Encourage
Arrest Policies for Domestic Violence
810 Seventh Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20531
[overnight courier ZIP code 20001]

To find out more information about the National Institute of Justice, please
contact:

National Criminal Justice Reference Service
Box 6000
Rockville, MD 20849-6000
800-851-3420
e-mail: askncjrs@ncjrs.org

If you have any questions, call or e-mail NCJRS.

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