Title: Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships: Evaluations of Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies for Domestic Violence. Series: NIJ Solicitation Author: NIJ Published: May 1998 Subject: Domestic violence 11 pages 21,000 bytes ------------------------------- Figures, charts, forms, and tables are not included in this ASCII plain-text file. To view this document in its entirety, download the Adobe Acrobat graphic file available from this Web site or order a print copy from NCJRS at 800-851-3420. ------------------------------- U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice Jeremy Travis, Director National Institute of Justice Solicitation May 1998 Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships: Evaluations of Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies for Domestic Violence APPLICATION DEADLINE: July 15, 1998 U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs 810 Seventh Street N.W. Washington, DC 20531 Janet Reno Attorney General U.S. Department of Justice Raymond C. Fisher Associate Attorney General Laurie Robinson Assistant Attorney General Noel Brennan Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jeremy Travis Director, National Institute of Justice ------------------------------- 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 ------------------------------- 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 Grants Office (VAWGO), is soliciting proposals for researcher-practitioner partnerships to evaluate practitioner collaborations under the Grants to Encourage Arrest Polices Program 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 Policies Program 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 Policies. These process evaluations should provide a thorough descriptive analysis of the issues being addressed by the project, including 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 previously been awarded a local process evaluation to conduct outcome 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 eight 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 statutory purposes or the Special Interest Categories of the Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies Program described below. The evaluations will be supported by cooperative agreements between the grantee and NIJ. NIJ, with input from VAWGO, 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 program is authorized for three years under Chapter 3, part U of the Violence Against Women Act. For fiscal year (FY) 1996, Congress appropriated $28 million to the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs for the program, which is being administered by VAWGO. Thirty-three million dollars were appropriated in FY 1997. For FY 1998, $59 million have been appropriated for the program. 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. Leveraging the coercive power of the criminal justice system to ensure victim safety and offender accountability is the guiding principle underlying the Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies. The Violence Against Women Act directs that Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies funds be used to: o Implement mandatory or proarrest policies and programs in police departments; o Develop policies and training programs in law enforcement agencies to improve tracking of domestic violence cases; o Centralize and coordinate handling of domestic violence cases across criminal justice agencies; o Coordinate inter-agency computer tracking systems; o Strengthen legal advocacy services for victims of domestic violence; and o Train judges and others responsible for judicial handling of domestic violence cases. The Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies funds will also be used to support promising approaches that respond to domestic violence within the Special Interest Categories outlined below. o Enforcement of protection orders and implementation of the full faith and credit provision of the Violence Against Women Act. o Domestic violence courts that employ frequent and proactive judicial monitoring, sanctions, and intensive supervision to manage offender behavior and ensure victim safety. o Community-driven initiatives to address violence against women among diverse, traditionally under served populations. o Partnerships between the business community and the criminal justice system to enhance the safety of women in the community. o Community policing to reduce and prevent violence against women. o Initiatives within police departments to address the problem of police officers who are perpetrators of domestic violence. o 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. o The development and implementation of coordinated initiatives to address incidents of stalking occurring in a domestic violence context. The Violence Against Women Grants Office has awarded 137 grants under the Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies Program. In Fiscal Year 1998, VAWGO intends to fund jurisdictions that have implemented - or plan to implement - a coordinated community response to domestic violence as a serious violation of criminal law, as well as provide continuation grants for some of the previously awarded projects. Further information about the program, including summaries of the projects funded, and the Fiscal Year 1998 Application Kit is available on the Violence Against Women Grants Office'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 statutory purposes or Special Interest Categories. It is anticipated that up to 8 awards will be made available for local process evaluations in individual jurisdictions. Each of these process 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 Program. 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; 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; non-profit, non-governmental organizations serving victims of domestic violence; victim advocates; and a researcher. Because understanding of 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 The specification of 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 evaluation of programs. 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 purpose areas or Special Interest Categories of the Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies Program. 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. 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: o identify some meaningful comparison group if feasible (a comparable group of individuals who have not participated in the project); o 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); o 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 two meetings during the course of the grant to be held in Washington, DC. 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 each other about issues being addressed, strategies adopted, and successes and challenges experienced in responding to domestic violence. A key participant at these meetings will be the grantee conducting the national evaluation of the Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies program. The costs of these federally-sponsored meetings will be covered by additional non- grant funds. 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: o Standard Form (SF) 424--application for Federal assistance o Assurances o Certifications Regarding Lobbying, Debarment, Suspension and Other Responsibility Matters; and Drug-Free Workplace Requirements (one form) o Disclosure of Lobbying Activities o Budget Detail Worksheet o Budget Narrative o Negotiated indirect rate agreement (if appropriate) o 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 o Proposal abstract o Table of contents o Program narrative or technical proposal o Privacy certificate o References o Letters of cooperation from organizations collaborating in the research project o Resumes o 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 July 15, 1998. 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 8 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: o 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. o 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). o 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 10 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 To obtain an electronic version of this document, access the NIJ web site (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij). If you have any questions, call or e-mail NCJRS. -------------------------------