Demonstrate the application of sequential exploratory mixed methods using the NIJ SAK Action Research Project discussed in the chapter.

Question

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The Answer is The NIJ SAK Action Research Project evaluation was designed to answer three focal questions: (1) what happened in these investigations and how thorough was the police investigative response?; (2) to what extent did police provide explanations for their investigative response and what specific beliefs and attitudes appeared in their explanations?; and (3) to what extent did the investigative responses and explanations provided vary across cases?. To answer these questions, the process evaluation took the form of a sequential exploratory mixed methods multi-study. In this approach, the multi-study sequence begins with exploratory qualitative work to learn about the phenomenon of interest. Findings from this phase of work are then used to inform the subsequent quantitative investigation. In this program, process evaluation, directed, and conventional content analyses were used to code actual police case records for explanations provided by police for their response to sexual assault. Then, path analysis was used to examine empirically the relationships between the investigative response, the explanations provided by police for the investigative response, and specific case variables. Briefly, path analysis is a flexible approach that allows for the empirical examination of theorized models that explain how variables relate to one another by constraining and relaxing parameters within the model, assessing for improved model fit along the way. Evaluators then used analytic method to examine the explanations provided by police as predictors of the police response; the relationship between the different types of explanations provided by police and the police response; and the impact of victim and perpetrator sex, race, and age, as well as the number of perpetrators, on both the explanations provided by police and the police response.

Demonstrate the Application of Sequential Exploratory Mixed Methods Using the NIJ