I was reading an article that was included in today's ACEs Connection Daily Digest that appears on the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange website. The article is an in-depth exploration of the use of evidence-based practices in juvenile justice and some of the controversy and issues involved.
The above-linked article is very interesting and worth the read, but what particularly interested me was a mention of Dr. Mark Lipsey's Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol (SPEP). SPEP is designed to provide a validated way for community-based programs demonstrate effectiveness without necessarily meeting to rigorous standards and exorbitant costs of randomized control trials. I was curious if anyone is familiar with these SPEP and if you have any thoughts or opinions about it.