DOI: 10.3886/icpsr37893.v1
title: Evaluation of an Intensive Truancy Reduction Program (ACT) within Communities In Schools of the Dallas Region, 2016-2019
title: CISDRXT in CIS
title: Version 1

description: This study, Evaluation of an Intensive Truancy Reduction Program (ACT) within Communities In Schools, is a within-school, student-level randomized controlled trial evaluation of an intensive truancy reduction program (ACT) through Communities In Schools (CIS), within five schools in a large urban district in the Southwest. CIS has adapted the CIS Core model for case management (Core) with an adaption of a community-based psychiatric rehabilitation treatment model and named the new model ACT. The three-year longitudinal study, conducted during the 2016/17 - 2018/19 school years, included 2,136 6-8th grade students (1,152 ACT students and 984 Core students). Data was collected including student demographic information, implementation fidelity information, as well as baseline and outcome data related to student attendance, behavior, standardized test scores and on-track to graduate status (when applicable). Fidelity information includes the number of received CIS services by service type and overall total number of services as well as total hours of CIS services provided by student.
description: The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of ACT, compared to Core, to improve student engagement and school connectedness--as measured by attendance, behavior, and academic achievement--of highly at-risk middle school students.
description: Students listed on the school roster as "at-risk" (per state criteria) are identified (based on recently presenting or pre-existing indicators negatively impacting core class performance, attendance and/or behavior) and assigned to CIS case management in an ongoing process through referrals and recommendations from teachers, administrators, guidance counselors, campus faculty or student, or parent self-referrals. This same process was used for both ACT and Core students. Working together, the program and research teams designed a random assignment process to address these concerns whereby students were randomly assigned to either condition (Core or ACT) as they were referred, prior to their initial conversation with a CIS case manager and prior to obtaining parental consent.
description: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Presence of Common Scales: Not applicable.
description: Response Rates: Not applicable.
description: Datasets: DS1: Dataset
description: At-risk students grades 6-8 participating in the Communities In Schools dropout prevention program in the United States. Smallest Geographic Unit: None.
description: The primary, confirmatory sample for this study consists of students who were randomly assigned into either ACT or Core throughout the three implementation years, resulting in three cohorts of study participants.