ProgEval: A blog on Program Evaluation

Every Picture Can Tell a Story

An evolving method for telling the story of programs is a sequence of digital photographs of the program facilities, program activities, and (sometimes, although rarely) outcomes.

TMG started doing this in the mid-90s, and some of our early work is still on our web site. We called these cybertours. At the time, they were fairly unique.

Sequences of digital pictures have now almost become ubiquitous.

... And ... Every picture can tell a story, although these are now most often used to show program staff and staff meetings.

The real challenge seems to be to take pictures that can tell the story of the activities conducted by the program and their outcomes. And to have the pictures be "stand-alone" ones which require only minimal text explanations, if any at all.

A big issue is how to show patient-client outcomes while not showing identifiable patients-clients, for the obvious ethical and legal reasons. This one is hard.

Nonetheless, the time of the use of pictures in explaining and documenting programs and outcomes is becoming much more sophisticated, a trend that can only improve the field of program evaluation.

My $.02.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

How I Knew the Archstone Grantee Meeting This Week was Great

In the 18 hours of meetings and receptions I attended at the Archstone Convening this week, and in sessions with about 60 professionals, I heard only about 3 or 4 cell phones go off during the entire time!

When this many professionals put their cell phones on mute or even turn them off completely, you know it is a good meeting.

[In the typical federal grantee meeting of the same size, cell phones go off about every 2-3 minutes.]

The Huba Cell Phone Interruptions Index is:

0-1 call interruptions per hour: Amazing

2-5 cell phone interruptions per hour: OK

5 or more cell phone interruptions per hour: Sentence the offenders to listening to 12 straight hours of inane cell phone ringers

15 or more cell phone interruptions per hour: Must be a federal meeting

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Orange County, CA

One airport I like to fly into is the Orange County facility in Anaheim/Costa Mesa. Great restaurants, great shops, an ok Admirals Club and easy to access ground transportation. Great alternative to LAX or Long Beach. BIG contrast to LAX.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

QSR, One Last Time

The president of QSR -- John Owen -- will personally answer your repeated emails.

Now while I do not completely agree with his positions, he is articulate and takes the time to interact carefully with his company's customers.

6 stars (out of 5). This is the old-fashioned way it should be done.

(Oh... and I would have given him 7 stars out of 5 if he had agreed with me!)

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

The Next Grantee Meeting

I like grantee meetings for programmatic efforts sponsored by goverment agencies and foundations. I do not like grantee meetings for programmatic efforts sponsored by government agencies and foundations.

What are the differences between "good" and "not good" grantee meetings.

"Good" grantee meetings: a) the grantees do most of the talking in an interactive way (people sit around a big table and talk to each other, there may be breakout groups where people sit around a small table and talk to each other); b) grantees define the goals for the meeting; c) information and resources are shared among grantees; and d) specific products of the group (such as articles, presentations at meetings, web sites, joint policy statements) are proposed and worked on.

"Not good" grantee meetings: a) the funder and organizer (the funder always hires a third-party organizer under this model) set the agenda for the meeting; b) the funder, the organizers, and "speakers" they hire do most of the talking; c) grantees feel like they are sitting in a college lecture hall and act accordingly (these folks are too old to use Facebook during the meeting, but they do read the local newspaper, play with crackberries, and talk to each other); and d) little gets done.

I'm off to a meeting of the Archstone Foundation Elder Abuse & Neglect Initiative. They have "good, better, best" grantee meetings. Time to get to work, produce something as a group, and feel good about that. And, NO lectures. (My crackberry thumbs will thank me.)

Yeah.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

The Price of SPSS Annual Support (Update) Contracts

Ridiculous

OR

Absurd

OR

@#$%%*

OR

All of the Above

[Take you choice. Mine should be obvious.]

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Windows Vista and Office 2007: Still Great After a Month

As an follow-up to my previous posts on the advantages of Windows Vista and Office 2007, to which I upgrade a few weeks ago, I would note that I am even more enthusiastic about Office 2007 than I was before and I continue to be very pleased with Windows Vista. Both are recommended and in neither case have I found most of the criticisms that abound on the Internet to be true.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Predatory Software Pricing: Punished for Honesty and Hard Work

One thing that really ticks me off is that scientific-professional software companies set a large list price for their programs and then offer big discounts to educational users, non-profit users, their mother-in-law and her astrologer, Hillary Clinton, and the little old lady in the shoe, but expect my company to pay full list price because we are a "commercial user."

Heck, I want to make money for my work; that is what a consultant does. So I am "commercial" even though our clients are drug abuse clinics, Foundations, agencies that help abused elders, the U.S. government, non-profit medical centers, etc. I pay full price. On the other hand, the university professor who does consulting on the side, "steals" a copy of the software from his/her institution because in addition to using the software to prepare classes or work with students, it gets used in the consulting work, will receive either a free (stolen) copy or can buy one for a 40% educational discount.

So I pay 40% more because I am honest and admit I work for money. The prof rips off the software -- often from a taxpayer supported institution -- and uses it for free. And the institution (university) that lets this charade go on gets a 40% or more discount on every copy it buys and lets its employees abuse.

[Does this happen? YES. I live in a major university town (Chapel Hill) and I know more than a few profs who have $100,000 consulting practices in addition to their university jobs and think nothing of using university-owned notebook computers and software to make money for themselves; they tell me about this at parties. You hear the "everybody does it argument" and the "I don't care because I am not a money-grubbing commericial person like you but an honorable professor" argument all the time.]

It seems like predatory pricing to expect my company to pay more for a piece of scientific software than a moon-lighting prof has to pay. (Take that SPSS, SAS, QSR, and all the rest, including even Microsoft.)

My $.028. (It was $.02 but I have to pay 40% more because I am a money-grubbing commercial person who software companies believe should be penalized for working hard.)

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

The Good News and the Bad News: NVIVO Activation

Well, I received an email from QSR about my inability to activate NVIVO 8. I finally got it to work after several more tries of their recommended procedure and then my realization that they had never said to turn the firewall off and when I did their work-around actually worked. Of course, I should have figured this out for myself, because when I initially tried to install NVIVO I had to turn off the firewall after I couldn't get the program to properly install the first few times I tried.

QSR gets gold stars for the fact that their CEO John Owen answered my email himself -- as I would have had a customer complained to our company -- and attempted to solve the problem. Mr. Owen was candid and helpful. Eventually the problem was solved.

Now the "bad" news (give back some of the gold stars) ... Apparently the activation problems are a known bug with NVIVO which the company does not tell you about when they send a disk, nor does it seem to be documented on their web site although I will admit that I did not spend a lot of time looking for a mea culpa statement there. So, user beware on this one. (According to Mr. Owen, you avoid this problem if you install their program AND then install their service pack before attempting to activate the program. But, who would do that, especially in the absence of documentation that conspicuously told you to do so? Heck, I would have thought that you could not even install the service pack unless you first activated the program, but when it did not work the first time, I went ahead and then tried to install the service pack hoping it would help and actually made the problem worse by doing so.)

Again, NVIVO 8 is an exceptional product. I highly recommend the program and once you get it running it does what it is supposed to do well, accurately, and increasingly smoothly compared to both earlier versions and an absolute standard of excellence. And Mr. Owen appears to be quite committed to insuring excellence in their product offerings.

But, this kind of Mickey-Mouse stuff with activation problems needs to be solved and people need to be warned in advance if there are known problems. My professional time is not free (unless, of course, I choose to donate it to a worthy cause that I pick) and it was a bummer to waste time on a programming bug QSR knew about.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Software Lament (Again) ... to the Tune of "Everyday I Have the Blues" (by B. B. King)

It is extremely frustrating to pay $1000 for a piece of technical software and then to be jerked around for four days by a silly authentication procedure that does not accept the 20 digit bizarre code you keep typing into the program.

This state is spelled QSR (the makers of the program NVIVO 8).

NVIVO 8 is an awesome, sophisticated, super-duper program with a brain-damaged authentication module. As you can see on this blog, I have highly recommended it previously and would continue to do so. But, what good is it to have the best qualitative analysis program available when the program (and apparently QSR) will not believe that you actually paid for it (even though they have a record of your credit card transaction with them)?

[Per a previous post, I wrote that I waited almost two months to receive my copy of NVIVO 8 because UPS ate it during transit from Australia or wherever, and an empty damaged box arrived. To QSR's credit they shipped another copy within 48 hours by overnight carrier after we discovered the UPS error; unfortunately they appear to have sent a copy that has a different serial number than that marked on their box or cover letter -- each of which has a different unlock code, neither of which seems to work.]

It used to be simple in the old days five years ago when software purveyors trusted end users and did not force you to enter arcane passcodes. I guess this is what happens when some professor lets 125 students all copy a piece of unprotected software for free for a course (and it must be a professor, because what student is going to illegally copy a piece of qualitative analysis software instead of the most recent CD by the hottest band when left to their own devices?).

And, the other thing that really ticks me off is that QSR charges our company much more per copy than they charge university professors (many with consulting practices like ours) or non-profit agencies (many of whom are "for profit organizations in drag" who compete with our company). Pay more get less.

As a general principle, I would think that if you want to charge an end user $1000 per program copy, you need to be prepared to offer more than $.25 worth of customer service (because it takes QSR 48 hours to answer an email and provide an answer that is not really useful).

(At this point, B. B. King usually started talking to Lucille -- his guitar -- and what a conversation it was.)

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Air Travel: Summer is Here

All of the planes were full last week, lines were long, and the lines were held up by folks who only fly once in a while and don't know why they cannot bring prohibited items or family members (not flying) through security and who berate flight attendants because there is no food on board in coach. The "best" part was when the flight attendant making announcements asked people to turn off the cell phones three times, and then asked two minutes later if she had to walk around the cabin and make personal requests to people.

Welcome to summer in the business world.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

NVIVO 8 is a Big Improvement and License Keys

Installed NVIVO 8. It is a big improvement over Version 7. I have not tried most of the new features yet, but the "old" features just work better than they did in NVIVO 7.

The upgrade is definitely worth the cost.

[Activation was quirky. The activation program told me that the program had not been activated so I submitted the information a second time and was told that the program was already activated. And ... how I wish that software companies would get the "stoopid" activation procedures working correctly. I also wish they would print the @$%^ 25-character license keys in a font that can be read; my bifocal prescription is completely up to date and my vision corrects to more than 20/20 so I know that this one is not my eyes.]

You can get a free 30-day trial of the software from QSR; www.QSRinternational.com.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

New York, New York, and Perspective

Flew into New York, New York, earlier this week.

One of those days where the air is super clean and the light is just right when you are flying in and out.

Flying the length of Manhattan from the Statute of Liberty to the George Washington Bridge on a beautiful day when New York, New York, is shining like a diamond always makes me feel the beauty of our country and the strength of our citizenry.

It was a great context for working with my friends at NYU on ways to improve the nursing care provided by specialty nurses for the elderly.

On days like the one earlier in the week I know that I have the best job in the world because I spend a lot of time with extremely interesting and bright people who are using all of their talents to make sure that all of the vulnerable people down there in New York, New York, and the rest of the U.S.A., get the best possible health and social care possible.

On a clear day you can see forever ... and maybe see what is important.

[P.S. The "best" version of "New York, New York, is by Frank Sinatra.]

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

No Posts for 9 Days

Sorry for not posting for 9 days

BIG report this week and Foundation Board presentation early next week.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Office 2007

Been using Office 2007 for almost two weeks. HUGE improvement over Office 2003.

Yes, it takes a week to get used to the new menu structure. But, DEFINITELY worth it.

The only "problem" is that it will be difficult to go back and use Office 2003 on a computer that does not have Office 2007 installed.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

New Days A'Comin... The Social Agenda in the USA

Now that Senator Obama has officially clinched the Democratic nomination for President, it seems clear that there will be a new national policy for social and medical services in 2009. That is, IF either candidate can move the Congress toward the new President's agenda. Big task there, but stranger things have been known to happen.

Not matter what you think about her other qualifications for the job (and at times I am duly impressed), I am personally pleased that we will not have a repeat of the fiasco in 1993-4 when Senator (then First Lady) Clinton attempted to change the medical-social care system by wanting to let health economists and epidemiologists run amok rather than letting doctors, psychologists, social workers, and other professionals do their jobs. What was proposed was a technocratic health care system worse than our current system. One try at that was enough.

Senator McCain and Senator Obama (alphabetical order here; no political preference implied) have both made promises to put a greater emphasis on the social agenda of the country; both have established records (although in different ways) of valuing social and medical services and being willing to change things that are broken. Both offer some hope for the future of the medical and social services network that provides a safety net for vulnerable individuals in our society.

I am cautiously optimistic (there is still that issue of getting Congress to do something constructive) that the social agenda will be more important for the next four years, maybe much more important.

May both candidates surprise me and keep their word. (Wouldn't that be something!)

My $.05 (used to be $.02 but inflation is getting worse).

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Rumors About My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated (Windows Vista)

I started using a new computer running Windows Vista a few days ago. I dreaded it and left a new computer in a box for two months until I had to open it when my last computer died on Saturday night.

Guess I believed all of the Apple commercials and bad press in the tech magazines about Vista.

Vista works fine. Better than Windows XP. (Yes I would rather have a cool-looking Mac but I have to run grown-up software that will not run on a Mac unless the Mac is running Windows. Also, comparably equipped Macs and Lenovo notebooks are priced so that the Mac is about 40% more. 40% more should buy a lot besides just a cool looking box since many of the parts inside the boxes come from the same places.)

Windows Vista works fine, is easy to learn (say 10 minutes or so unless you are having a bad hair day and then it will take 45 minutes), and is much more stable than Windows XP. Recommended if your software will not run on a Mac in native mode or you just want to save money.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

School's Out for Summer

Last day of school today. Means I work more in my home office and have helpers who help keep everything in perspective. It also means more emails will get answered from my smartphone or in the evening if it is a nice late afternoon to be at the swimming pool.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

The Incredible Expanding Airlines Change Fee and One-eyed, One-horned, Flying Purple Eaters

American Airlines just raised their $100 itinerary change fee to $150.

(Blame it on fuel costs or bozo management or some kind of conspiracy or the Federal Reserve Board, 50% is a big change. Personally I lean toward blaming the one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple eaters who run American Airlines.)

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Pretzel Logic, Part 2: Software Sales and Shorting Stocks

My computer crashed and I need to purchase a new copy of Adobe Acrobat. Adobe's web site lists Version 9 as their new update and states that it is coming "real soon now." Their web site does not let you order an older version (that perhaps you could upgrade for free or a small fee).

Adobe is a publicly-traded company. Things like this lead you to wonder if you should short their stock.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Frank Sinatra and the Professional Toolkit

When I was 25 ... I couldn't stand Frank Sinatra ... (or qualitative data or professional judgment, just numbers) ...

...

...

When I was 55, I realized Frank was a master (and I value qualitative data highly) ...

(Frank was especially good in the sessions he recorded with Count Basie.)

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Junk Email, Evaluation Indicators, and Human Scum

Like anyone else who is likely to be reading this blog, I receive more emails than I can count every day suggesting that I can receive $20M in "bounty" by sending somebody in Nigeria $50,000, that I can order Viagra from somewhere in the Carribean, that for $300 I can get my colon cleansed and have instant weight loss, and that I have a very high likelihood of winning the Jamaican lottery. I get offers of reverse mortgages on any property I might own and I still get offers to refinance my mortgage for rates that I know are several percent below current market rates. Not to mention the offers to purchase penny stocks that I am told will appreciate 2000% in a month. And the phone rings from 6-8 PM every evening with people pitching many of the same offers, as well as subscriptions to the local paper, opportunities to protect my identity, opening new credit cards, power washing my house, and landscaping my yard.

Who takes this nonsense seriously?

Vulnerable older adults... those with impending Alzheimer's disease or current cognitive deficit, those who are socially isolated and crave human contact, those whose caregivers limit access to valid sources of information, those who caregivers might be keeping them on tranquilizers or other medication designed to make them "controllable."

Many of these older adults bought houses 30 or 40 or 50 years ago in such out of the way (at that time) communities as Silicon Valley or suburban San Diego or West Los Angeles or the Napa Valley. After all these years they still think of themselves as of "ordinary" means, working class folks. But the houses in which they live might now be worth hundreds of thousands, if not many millions, of dollars, and the equity in those houses can pay for their medical and personal care in the later years of their lives.

Ripe targets for the human scum who are out to exploit older folks who cannot necessarily fend for themselves anymore. And to rob these older adults of the opportunity for good quality of life, good medical and living care, and happiness at the end of their lives.

Looking at the evaluation data from the Archstone Elder Abuse and Neglect Initiative funded from 2006 through 2010, we have found that many tens of millions of dollars of assets can be preserved annually by funding a dozen "small" projects. 

This is a "real" and significant indicator that shows the value of services for vulnerable elderly populations. The Archstone Foundation is to be commended for their pioneering work in funding this area.

Some of the "protected" elders responded to those ludicrous emails we all relegate to the junk folder in Outlook, while others received solicitations from extremely "sympathetic and friendly" folks who called them on the phone.

Grant initiatives like this one help protect the elderly from human scum. Most excellent.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

It's Been a Lonnnnnggg Time Cominnnng: Immediate and Long-term Outcomes

I like to see immediate outcomes like the balance in my stock market account daily (or hourly) and how much our company has billed in services each month. I like to see the results of my kids' weekly spelling tests. I like to see how the programs we evaluate are doing quarterly. Immediate outcomes. Good for feeling good (or bad) on a daily-weekly-monthly-quarterly basis.

The outcomes that really matter require a much longer time frame to assess well: how your kids are doing; how your marriage is doing; whether you are really healthy; whether your net worth is really going up; and whether programs you work with can stand the test of time and use the information you have provided to gradually improve their quality.

Educating the programs you evaluate and their funders that long-term outcomes are the name of the game is a key part of the tasks of a successful program evaluator.

Time Passages. (... and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young are still around ... doo-doo-doo-da-doo; da-do-do-da-do-do-do ...)

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Television Program Review, Data Collection, Data Cleaning, and Data Analysis

HBO is running a "made-for-TV" movie this month called "Recount." It is about the Florida election results in 2000 and the attempts of each party to count the votes in a way that was maximally advantageous to their own candidate. Kevin Spacey is great in the program as the "point person" for the Democrats. And it is a very compelling movie.

(At TMG we hope to never hire the likes of the woman who designed a ballot form for Palm Beach County that could not be understood by many voters.)

Evaluators who use quantitative methods and quantitative data competently deal with a lot of "hanging chad" and "dimpled" observations as they clean the data forms. (Thank goodness that we do not have the Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts looking over our shoulders.)

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

The Long and Winding Road, Boring Technical Appendices, and Funding

Yesterday I talked to a retired guy in a non-work context. He had just come to North Carolina to retire with his wife and be near his adult children.

It came out that I worked for TMG in California so he asked me what our company does.

One of the most comprehensive projects we ever conducted was a three-year master planning effort in San Diego County for alcohol and drug abuse, mental health, HIV, and related social services. The planning effort include government health and social service agencies, private providers, members of the criminal justice system, representatives of disenfranchised groups from throughout the fourth largest county in the United States, elected officials, representatives of the public school system, and general community members. The planning went on from 1991 through 1994. To this day I would characterize this as one of the more interesting and rewarding projects our company ever worked on.

Turns out the the guy I met was the primary health lobbyist in Sacramento (to the state government of California before it was run by a retired weight lifter) for San Diego County at that time and had used our work for 10 years to justify increased service funding for San Diego County to California legislators. He knew details from our reports that I had forgotten. Stuff from all of the meticulous, detailed, but boring technical appendices I thought people "weighed" rather than reading. (Maybe he was just being polite -- after all, he had been a professional lobbyist (!) -- but he made a big deal that I was "that George Huba.")

Sometimes boring people with long technical appendices and statistics in evaluation reports is just what they will need in the future.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Every Picture Tells a Story: Program Pictures

One of the things I find most compelling about using the Internet to show program evaluation results is that it is possible to post pictures that help to tell the story about a program. In the mid 90s The Measurement Group used to do a lot of this (as what we called CyberTours) but we have gotten away from posting a lot of pictures over the years. Don't know why, although I do know that it is a lot more work than most people would think to create, edit, and sequence a set of compelling pictures.

We will be starting to do this a lot more in the next month(s).

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Holiday Stats, Behavior Change, Program Effectiveness, and Media Frenzy

As Memorial Day weekend starts this afternoon, I am reminded that among the most reported statistics in the media each year are those that chronicle the effects of drunk driving on innocent victims and drivers during the traditional "summer drinking holidays." May these numbers decrease dramatically this year. And, may the media pay attention to how many people are injured or killed due to alcohol-related accidents every day of the year, not just on three weekends where they engage in the traditional body count on what might be otherwise "low hard news" days. There is no reason that there cannot be ZERO alcohol-related accidents and deaths since the behavior of drinking and then driving can be totally eliminated if individuals choose to not drink before driving. It is really that simple. REALLY.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Minor League Baseball

I went to a minor league baseball game last night (Durham Bulls -- yes, those Durham Bulls but now they play in what many think is the best minor league baseball park in the country and that rickety old baseball park in the movie is a downtown Durham historical site, and yes they hand out programs with pictures of Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon on the cover).

Minor league baseball. A "competition" but nobody really cares who wins, just that the game is fair and interesting and that everyone on the field learns something by playing and sharpening their skills.

What a concept.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Are Your Professional Credentials Being Incorrectly Reported on a Web Site that Develops and Sells Bios of Professionals and Organizations?

There is a web site www.zoominfo.com that recently came to our attention. Apparently, this web site takes information about the staff of organizations off web sites and reproduces it in their data base of individuals and organizations which is published on www.zoominfo.com.

Zoominfo extracted copyrighted material from our web site www.TheMeasurementGroup.com about my business partner Lisa Melchior and our company; the bio is incomplete, distorted, and a disservice to Dr. Melchior. They also have a bio on their web site for me (under George Huba), but it is completely wrong, although it is nice to see myself characterized as being 20 years younger than I am, and they also have me working for the American Academy of Nursing (a collaborator of mine, but an organization which has neither been an employer for me nor a direct client of TMG).

I have also been aware -- in the past month or two -- that Google searches for individual professionals often bring you to www.zoominfo.com.

You might want to check and see if they have put a bio up for you, whether it is accurate or not, and whether it infringes on any copyrights held by you or your organization.

A good discussion of zoominfo, the problems with their business model, zoominfo's unwillingness to verify information and take responsibility for their published content, and copyright issues for web content is given at http://www.canvasdreams.co.uk/blog.php?blogurl=webservations&PostID=446.

Once my blood pressure came down, I searched the "paid" portion of zoominfo (using their free one day pass) for information on our company and on me (I apparently have a second listing, G. J. Huba, in addition to George Huba). G. J. Huba has a PhD from BOTH Yale and the University of Michigan (apparently giving me credit for Dr. Melchior's doctoral degree at Michigan) and is on the "Board of Directors" of several organizations which happen to be federally-funded evaluation centers (research grants) of which I was the "director" in the 1990s. The Measurement Group has an extra set of "employees" (a half dozen staff members at the Health Resources and Services Administration, a division of the U.S. government with whom we collaborated 10 years ago when they funded our evaluation centers) and The Measurement Group's identified "competitors" are 15 Universities (such as Harvard, San Diego State, etc.) with whom we collaborate on various projects (gee, do I hope that none of them see this nonsense). The addresses and phone numbers and employee lists and a LOT of other things are wrong for both The Measurement Group and for me.

Get it? Apparently zoominfo does not.

As a "control condition" I searched zoominfo for information on Dr. Peter M. Bentler, a collaborator of mine 25 years ago, the former chair of the UCLA Psychology Department, the author of more than 1000 published papers, and the winner of just about every major award in the field of psychology. If anyone should be "visible" to a search engine, it is Dr. Bentler. Dr. Bentler is listed twice: once as an employee of the Western Psychological Association (because he is or was their President-elect) and once as an employee of the American Psychological Association (because he won an award from them recently). None of his 1000+ papers is listed, nor are any of his honors listed. Nor is Dr. Bentler's doctorate from Stanford listed, nor the fact that he has probably been on the faculty at UCLA for almost 40 years and during that time has held dozens of important professional positions within the field of psychology.

Get it? Apparently zoominfo does not.

A lot of the information given on the zoominfo web site can potentially harm our company, The Measurement Group, and me as an individual professional.

I personally find it distasteful that someone would publish a bio of me (and even worse, a grossly distorted bio of me) on a web site without my permission. I also find it distasteful (and even worse, probably an act in violation of legal statutes) that copyrighted materials from our web site have been taken and reproduced, whether for sale or for free distribution, by another web site in a way that may well transcend the "fair use" provisions of U.S. copyright law.

Get it? Apparently zoominfo does not.

See if you are in their database. I doubt that this will make you happy.

And, don't believe what you read about somebody else on zoominfo or some other similar web site. At least in the case of Dr. Melchior, Dr. Huba, The Measurement Group, and Dr. Bentler (of UCLA) the information given there is grossly inaccurate.

Shame on zoominfo.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Restaurant Review, Flexibility, and Seeing Opportunities

Earlier this week, I was in Los Angeles, the "American home" of Mexican cuisine. Didn't go out to a Mexican restaurant. On Wednesday, I flew through Austin and had a chance at the airport to go to a couple of pretty good Tex-Mex restaurants. Didn't have lunch at any of them. On Wednesday afternoon, I arrived in North Carolina to visit our office there and went out to a Mexican restaurant that night. (A Mexican restaurant in North Carolina after my itinerary of the week?)

Carrboro, North Carolina ("suburban" Chapel Hill) has one of the best Mexican restaurants in the U.S. They win lots of awards in such places as Gourmet Magazine. The President of Duke University says it is his favorite restaurant in the USA. It is definitely one of my favorites. The restaurant has 10 tables (vintage 1940 and showing their age) and an unpaved parking lot at their remote location in the middle of farm country 8 miles from the nearest shopping plaza.

It takes some flexibility to overcome one's natural inclination to seek a good Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles or Austin rather than in Carrboro, North Carolina.

Consider the "opportunity." 3 combo plates still cost $8.95 in Carrboro and Fajitas cost $10.95.

I hope we use the same kind of attitude in our work as we do in seeking out "hidden gem" restaurants. If you go to Chapel Hill, I will tell you the name of this discovery and give you directions.

Viva la Carrboro.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Qualitative is the New Quantitative

15-20 years ago when the Federal government made treatment grants, it required "qualitative" (or at least non-quantitative) reports when any reports were required at all.

Then the world of grant reporting (and evaluation) got quantitative. Numbers, numbers, numbers -- sometimes every quarter.

Then the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 came into being when Congress asked the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to monitor the output of federal agencies. GPRA was fully implemented by most federal agencies by 1998.

Even more numbers, numbers, numbers. Even when the numbers were of dubious validity and little utility for decision making.

Now, in reaction to numbers that do not always pass the smell test, everywhere you look evaluators (and government agencies and Foundations) are "discovering" interviews and focus groups and the review of naturally-occurring indices and documents. Qualitative, qualitative, qualitative.

Qualitative is the new quantitative.

Let's all get with this fashion trend.

Wonder what is next???

Mixed (qualitative-quantitative), mixed, mixed. (Next year's teal.)

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

AUS is the New DFW

I've started to use Austin (AUS) as a hub airport when I fly out of Los Angeles (LAX) whenever it is possible to do so because Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) airport is so difficult to deal with. American Airlines flights into and out of Austin seem to be relatively uncrowded (translate: about only 50% full), the Austin airport is new and has great restaurants right next to the gates, and the flying experience through there is about as unhassled as it gets these days. Recommended.

Update later on 5/14/08: My flight from Los Angeles (LAX) to AUS had about 30 people on a 120 passenger plane today. My flight from AUS to Raleigh-Durham (RDU) had about 50 people on a 120 passenger plane. Empty seats next to you. It doesn't get any better than this in the current air travel environment.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

NVIVO 7 and QSR International

Got a call from Brian Moriarty of QSR International today about the fact that my copy of NVIVO 8 had not arrived for 8 weeks after we paid for it (it got lost in shipping and all the overnight company delivered was an empty envelope with a mailing label attached); QSR (correctly and immediately) replaced the empty envelope wih a real copy, also offering to let me download it from their site, and Mr. Moriarty was calling to see if there was anything else they needed to do to correct the situation.

In the process they must have looked at this blog because I was told by Mr. Moriarty that there is a QSR office in Boston that can help US customers and the QSR programmers would be glad to help if NVIVO 7 (or 8) was "running slow." He mentioned that somebody at QSR had seen my posts about NVIVO being slow and QSR being half a world away. Customer service!!!

My conclusions: 1) it is nice to know somebody reads my blog; 2) QSR is trying real hard.

For those interested, Brian Moriarty, QSR International, 617-491-1850 (greater Boston), b.moriarty@qsrinternational.com. (Ask him for the "I read George Huba's blog discount" and see if that gets a laugh.)

(They definitely have a sense of humor about this program in Australia, albeit perhaps a "juvenile" one; the program that pre-dated the current NVIVO was called NUD*IST, having had some really contrived acronymic meaning, indicating that they probably just wanted to call a commercial product "nudist." Go figure.)

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

CDMA Cell Phone Service Around the USA

I've used a CDMA cell phone on the Sprint network for more than 10 years. Recently I have been setting my (Palm Treo) phone to roam onto the "B" network (Verizon) as I travel around the USA. Verizon works better for me in Los Angeles (everywhere), rural North Carolina, the Dallas airport, the Austin airport, the Raleigh-Durham airport, O'Hare airport, Boston, suburban NYC, and Manhattan. I think I am seeing a pattern.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

The Weather, Al Gore, and Mathematical Models

I've been checking the weather forecasts all week because we have an outside, graduation party at our house this weekend for one of my wife's Ph.D. students at UNC.

Ever notice how accurate weather forecasts have become? 45 years ago when I entered my teens, weather forecasts were so bad it probably would have been as accurate to read Tarot cards as to read the weather forecast in the newspaper (remember, Al Gore had not invented the Internet yet, so you had to go buy a newspaper or wait for the 7am, 6pm, or 11pm news as there was no online Weather Channel or even a cable TV version, either).

(Wow a thought ... Al Gore was responsible for putting Tarot card readers out of business. Did he also invent cable TV?)

It strikes me that the dynamic, multidimensional mathematical models used for weather forecasting do a pretty good job (I reliably know when I can go the beach). In comparison, the mathematical models used to predict individual or group behavior do fairly poorly. WHY is this?

(More later ...)

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Professional Aging 3. Get a Good PDA and a Calculator

It should be obvious from several earlier posts that I am fascinated with PDAs (personal data assistants) which allow me to carry around dozens of douments and all of my Outlook contacts and tasks in my pocket. Heck, I also like to load a bunch of song and picture files on them, and I have read a lot of books on the screen of a PDA over the past 10 or so years (carried the DaVinci Code around on a Palm device for a year because I reread it a couple of times and NEVER got around to reading the copy of Bill Clinton's autobiography that I downloaded, which is something I view as a positive sign of maturity on my part).

The PDA definitely helps get me to meetings and return phone calls to the correct number after I find that the person taking the message does not write legibly. Just the thing for an aging brain.

Calculators (and there is usually a passable one on a PDA)... Even though I am trained as a quantitative psychologist and can do very complicated arithmetic in my head, I have learned to slow down and do all complex or simple arithmetic calculations with any importance (such as those in a scientific paper or those you report to the IRS) on a calculator, often doing the calculations three times to make sure that I get the same answer each time.

Arithmetic errors take on a lot more importance than they should, but they do, so why not eliminate them.

An example ... (and this one is often told in continuing education classes taught by forensic psychologists who testify professionally in court). A psychologist conducts a full day assessment including several psychological tests that are scored for dozens of scales from hundreds of items (think MMPI here). As soon as the psychologist is identified as an expert witness, the other side subpoenas the work sheets used by the psychologist in the testing. And then the questioning goes like this... "Dr. X, how can we believe your psychological test findings when this work sheet scoring the items for a psychological scale (waved conspiciously by the attorney in front of the jury) says that 2 + 7 + 11 + 14 = 33? If you can't even add, how can you decide my client is _____?" (The CEU course instructors almost invariably recommend that a potential professional witness destroy all worksheets because they so often have simple (albeit inconsequential) arithmetic errors that can damage the professional credibility of a witness. After all, if you destroyed the worksheet before you received a subpoena, it obviously cannot be used in court.)

Get a good calculator or a good PDA with a calculator program and you can keep your worksheets and fend off all of the bad jokes that your cognitive acuity is diminishing as you age.

(And, trust me, the IRS is even less forgiving of an inconsequential arithmetic error than a prosecutor or a defense attorney. TWICE in the last 10 years, I have received the 12 page IRS computer-generated form letter because my calculations were off by less than a nickel! One time they owed me $.01 and needed me to sign a letter and return it to them so that they would not have to pay me the $.01; last month they informed me that I owed them an extra $.04 because an extra week had elapsed and that $.04 was the interest payment but that they would forgive me because it would cost them more than $.04 to process my check, ignoring the $31.00 they probably spent to tell me I owed them $.04.)

Calculators and PDAs are your friends.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Graduation Weekend

This weekend there are six local universities (several world-class) having their graduation ceremonies around here (Chapel Hill--Durham--Raleigh, NC).

It will be darn near impossible to get a table in a local restaurant.

And that's OK. In spite of the knocks in the popular press about "deficiences" in higher education, it is one of the things we do best in the USA. Congratulations to those who take advantage of a system that has made our country the leader in professional and intellectual property fields. And to the families who see the graduation of the next generation as one of the crowning achievements of the current generation.

We need to make this opportunity available to everyone who is willing to work hard to gain entrance to a college or graduate school program and to work even harder to get through the program of study.

I hope the graduating classes get so big that I have NO CHANCE AT ALL of getting a table in a local restaurant on graduation weekend.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Professional Aging 2. Verbal Learning

15 years ago, when we were running a large, county-wide, multi-disciplinary needs assessment and planning process for the County of San Diego's Alcohol and Drug Services Department, we worked with literally more than 100 senior decision makers such as the heads of the Departments of Alcohol and Drug Services, Mental Health, the County Schools, the Probation Department, and such other luminaries as the dozen Police Chiefs, the County Sheriff, the five County Supervisors, Superior Court Judges, the heads of social and medical service agencies, and others.

We could produce report after report after report that had brilliantly conceived data, incredibly complete and complex conclusions, and supporting detail after supporting detail. Back then, in my early forties, I would roll my eyes when a County staff member would always chide us for having any written reports, and state the dogma in the County: "all of the decision makers are verbal learners and none will read anything." (I interpreted this to also mean that the County staff did not want to write reports.)

The decision makers did read our reports and we always received one deep question after another in meetings held after circulating a report. But, the decision makers also responded extremely well when we had meetings and we did presentations to brief them on the contents of the reports in a "read-through" format.

15 years later ... I personally learn a lot more when somebody intelligent talks me through the issues and their recommendations and their conclusions than I do from reading through a report on my own.

I think it took until my mid-fifties, but I now have also become a verbal learner. (Maybe it also has something to do with needing bifocals to read anything although I like to flatter myself and conclude that I have become a better listener over time!)

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Professional Aging 1. My Brain and Judgment

It's been 31 years since I received my doctorate in 1977. I like to think that I have learned a few things over the years and I think about this more and more as I get into my late 50s.

When I was much younger (25-35 years ago), I used to value the fact that I was a FORTRAN wizard (remember FORTRAN??? I even published a bunch of papers on programs I wrote), that I could do more statistical models in this new-fangled program LISREL and produce more statistical tables per hour that I never looked at than anyone I knew, and could push a lot of papers out the door into journals. Later (15-30 years ago), I valued long reports with numerous tables and detail after detail after detail to "inform" policy makers who did not really give a damn about data. Much later (5-15 years ago), I started to value synthesis and getting to the point, but always regressed into detail at the times of duress.

As I have aged, I would argue that the important professional skill I have developed is NOT on the list of the following: mathematical modeling, survey design, computer program, multivariate statistical analysis, LISREL, logistic regression, cluster analysis, profile analysis, needs assessment, factor analysis, publication in peer-reviewed journals, setting up computer networks, GIS mapping, etc. Now, I have concluded that younger brains than mine can keep up on the latest technical developments (even though I think I can still give them a run for the money) better than I can.

I believe that the true skill of a senior professional is good judgment. Good judgment takes decades to develop and in the context in which I work, it includes knowing when to believe and when to dismiss data, how much to weigh quantitative and qualitative data, when to guess when you do not have enough or perfect enough data, and when to say you cannot come to a conclusion within an acceptable error band.

Sometimes you just have to admit that you had to make 5,000 mistakes and go down 500 wrong paths in order to figure out how to avoid a lot of these in the future.

Professional aging is a good thing.

I wonder what I will think 10 years from now. There has to be a "next level" in this game.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

NVIVO Runs SLOW

Still using NVIVO 7 because UPS lost our copy of the new version (NVIVO 8) and six weeks later a plastic label holder with our shipping information arrived but it was not attached to the box from QSR! UPS is blaming everyone except themselves and QSR is sending a new copy from Australia that has not arrived yet.

A lot of NVIVO 7 runs take more than an hour to execute on our big dataset for the Archstone EANI project. I am hoping NVIVO 8 is faster! Oh well, while QSR runs in the background, I have LOTS of time to write blog entries and check CNN. (I think Obama closed the deal last night.)

Of course, QSR will say that our NVIVO runs are so slow because we are running the program on bigger datasets and bigger (more complex) queries than anyone else. What did they think we would do?

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

CDC Evaluation Form Wins Record for Length

The cross-cutting evaluator (NOT The Measurement Group) of the CDC REACH US Initiative has a form for local evaluators (of which we are one) to complete. They asked us to complete a paper version of their form this month because the database it will populate is not completed yet.

The paper form -- when expanded to the number of goals and objectives of our project -- is 300+ pages long. (For one goal and objective, it is about 60 pages long.) This form wins the record for the longest evaluation form I have ever seen.

Game, Set, Match. I concede.

Now our staff need to spend a week completing this thing.

And if the computer program is working next month, our staff need to spend a second week entering the same information into a database.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

And ... Even One More SAMHSA Proposal (for Homeless CJS Clients)

Another SAMHSA proposal is going in within a couple of weeks. This one is on outpatient treatment services for homeless, criminal justice system clients graduating from a residential drug treatment program. If even half of these proposals come in with funding, there will be a big bump in services in the areas where our partners have treatment programs.

This project is one of Lisa Melchior's so (except for a few times I get to comment and help edit the proposal) I get to keep working on a big Board presentation.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

A New Twist on Electronic Evaluation Databases in Medical Settings?

Something came up in the past week that was a surprise to me, but something that definitely needs to be considered.

An electronic database was selected as a cross-cutting evaluation instrument (by a cross-site evaluator, not TMG, and we just became the local evaluator of a project that has been running for more than a year using that database assessment program). The program logs client information, services, and certain outcomes.

The project is part of a medical center, and refers to the database as an "electronic medical record." They use it as such although billing is separate from the database.

If this is really an electronic medical record (EMR), the use of the data may be far more restricted than is the case for typical research or evaluation data. We are seeking clarification from an IRB before proceeding. What we do not understand is where the boundary is between something the provider considers an EMR and an evaluation-research database. Your guess is as good as mine, but I do know that if the IRB says this is a true EMR, additional federal regulations (like HIPAA) will restrict data use. Interesting... I never heard of this one before but it makes perfect sense that a traditional research-evaluation database could be viewed as an EMR.

There is great sensitivity to EMRs and data usage from them out here in Los Angeles where the medical records of two celebrities were recently leaked to the press from a major university medical center.

More later on this interesting issue.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Jazz and Klezmer and Cultural Diversity and the Human Experience

Thinking about jazz again this morning. And klezmer, the music of the Eastern European (Askenazic) Jewish community which evolved at about the same time in Eastern Europe within the Jewish ghettos that jazz was being developed in the 1800s and early 1900s in New Orleans by Black slaves who were later newly freed (and disenfranchised) African Americans.

Klezmer and jazz use an extremely similar chordal-modal-scale structure and many musicians go back and forth (easily) between the two forms (one of the classic klezmer albums of the past 20 years is by the African American clarinetist Don Byron who is widely acknowledged as a modern jazz master). American blue grass music also shares many common threads with jazz (and klezmer: one of the most famous klezmer musicians - Andy Statman - is also a well known blue grass mandolist). Many music critics discuss the great musical similarities between jazz and klezmer and some musicologists also cite the similarities in the cultural experiences of the groups who developed similar musical idioms with moods of great joy and the blues.

Jazz and klezmer were developed by peoples for whom slavery is a defining cultural and group experience, for whom poverty and disenfranchisement and discrimination followed slavery for a long time, and who still have yet to have a member of their peoples elected as President (or Vice President) of the United States (although that could well change in 2008).

These musical forms help me remember that the differences between cultures developed many thousand of miles apart and that their expressions of the beauty of freedom and their remberance of the ugliness of oppression are not large at all. Rejoicing in these similarities is a lot more productive than the endless discussion in the media of a YouTube video of a preacher having a very bad day who wants to see differences, not similarities, in the human quest for freedom and beauty (the same preacher still does not know enough when to stop basking in media "attention" even this morning). Let's remember that he only speaks for himself (which is also a right endorsed and defended by the same peoples who created jazz and klezmer as early expressions of their quest to freely speak for themselves).

Different peoples in different places, similar terrible experiences, and the development of parallel forms of "free expression" of beauty, flexibility, and creativity.

(My good friend Eustache Jean-Louis, M.D., a Haitian American, loves jazz as much as I do. When I see him in Boston, the pile of jazz CDs that I have to move off the passenger seat when I get in his car are pretty much all albums I own and greatly enjoy. I am going to have to give him some klezmer CDs. He and I have been working together on ways to eliminate the disparity among groups in participation in the health services system for years and I think he is going to like klezmer too.)

My $.04 (the Federal Reserve is telling us inflation is imminent and postage stamps are going up again and we all know that $.02 is worth less than $.04 was at the gas pumps last year).

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Jazz and Models of Program Evaluation

I like jazz ... a lot, and have since I was 14 years old, about 43 years ago. My iPod contains close to 100 different recordings of "How High the Moon" (the standard that everyone records in literally dozens of different styles; try comparing Dave Brubeck, Ella Fitzgerald, and Sun Ra, to mention a few). Actually, since I think that there are five main standards in jazz that everyone has to master (in addition to How High the Moon, also Ornithology, Sweet Georgia Brown, the Way You Look Tonight, and Giant Steps), I have close to 100 recordings of each of those songs on my iPod as well. I also have a few dozen recordings of Take Five, Manteca, Take the A Train, Mack the Knife, and Caravan crammed on the iPod at any one time.

Jazz improvisation is the ultimate form of musical responsiveness (to the other artists, to the song as written and interpreted by hundreds of artists over the years, to one's own strengths and limitations, to the situation that is encountered at any point in time as the moods of the audience and the other players change). Jazz improvisation is learned by knowing the theory of improvisation (yes, there is a theory and it is a fairly complex set of modes, jazz-blues scales, and rhythmic patterns), the history of how jazz has been performed, and by playing with many different musicians each of whom has different styles (a stable jazz group is one that lasts about 8 months!).

I like to think that what we do in program evaluations at The Measurement Group parallels jazz improvisation. We have spent 20 years trying to master this approach of being flexible and responsive, working in the theory of our field and finding ways of improvising within it, adjusting to the the rhythms and patterns of our collaborators and the measurement techniques and the decision making methods, and staying within a legacy we have learned from literally a hundred or more collaborators. We also try to "play the standards" in different styles, finding fresh ways to approach some of the prototypic issues in program evaluation.

(I've also spent the past few years trying to master actual jazz improvisation on the clarinet and my "How High the Moon" is starting to become passable, but I still have a LONG way (probably the rest of my life) to go before I would attempt it outside of a room with closed doors. It's a lot easier to "find the jazz scale" in my day job than with a musical instrument in my hands.)

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

The IRB is Dead, Long Live the IRB

Large health organizations (hospitals and HMOs) as well as universities have typically had their own Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to approve Human Subjects Protection Methods in research and evaluation studies as well as consent for treatment, research, and evaluation forms.

The composition and workings of IRBs are governed by various federal regulations. An IRB must be constituted of representatives of a broad number of professions that are concerned with the protection of research participants, patients, and clients.

Recently we have found that a number of organizations are out-sourcing their IRBs to outside companies who form "commercial" (for profit) IRBs that charge for a review. Note that the use of outside commercial IRBs has been common in the pharmaceutical industry for a number of decades, but their widespread use by not-for-profit organizations is very new.

This is a development that bears watching. And evaluating. Are clients-patients-participants at least as well protected as they would be if the IRB was formed and administered by the university or hospital at which the research-evaluation-treatment is being performed? More on the 11 o'clock news.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Yard Work and Program Evaluation (Continued)

The analogies continue ...

Doing a great evaluation is like planting wild flowers. You nurture them and watch them grow into a thing of beauty.

And now the statistics ...

If you believe the label on the bags, I planted in excess of 4,000,000 wild flower seeds in a three-acre meadow this spring (must have also planted about 20,000,000 grass seeds). Of course, who is going to count the 985,000 wild flower seeds claimed for a one pound bag of mixed seeds. Or how many seeds there are in a 50 pound bag of mixed tall fescue grass seed. (Grass seeds are much larger than the typical wild flower seeds, hence many less per pound.)

Or you could say that I planted one heck of a lot of seeds this spring, because after all, a well-seeded three-acre meadow takes one heck of a lot of grass blades and flowers to fill it.

Trying to count the plants in a meadow and the seeds that create these plants is sort of like trying to quantify how many angels dance on the head of a pin. Of course, this does not stop some program evaluators from trying to do so. Sometimes you just need to say "a lot" and step back and enjoy a meadow (program) with great beauty.

Ok, I'm stalling. Off to pull weeds.

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Data Cleaning and Utility Bills, Part II (Also Includes Lawn Care)

I received my substitute bill for my monthly electricity use this morning. Amazing. After they corrected their keying error, I owed them about $300, not $386,000. Oh yeah... the bill arrived without any kind of apology. Heck, if I owned the utility company that made this mistake, I would have given the customer a free month of electricity.

More thoughts on data cleaning as I head out to do yard work ... data cleaning is like pulling weeds: frustrating and boring, hard, and necessary if you want to have a good lawn.

(Using herbicides is not an option in data cleaning!)

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

One More SAMHSA Proposal on Services for Criminal Justice System Clients Going in Next Week

We have been working on a new proposal for substance abuse and mental health services for women coming into the programs with a significant history of "involvement" with the criminal justice system. TMG is working with out partners on lots of proposals this year. Women with CJS involvement include those who abuse drugs, sex workers, women who wrongly took the blame for a (male) partner's crime, and those who have committed violent crimes. Usually the women are on probation or parole at the time health and social services are offered; some are in alternate sentencing programs that substitute treatment for jail time.

We really like to be involved in service grants that help folks who are usually ignored by the treatment system. This is grass-roots health services redesign. Every time we say that we have written enough proposals in a given time period, somebody comes to us with a great idea that merits funding to study its efficacy and cost-effectiveness. And of we go again on the roller-coaster ride of preparing a fundable proposal.

[An aside. Fifteen years ago, "special, augmented" mental health and substance abuse programs were developed for women under Federal grants because of the assumption that "women had more problems" than men so they should have "richer" programs. My long-term collaborator, friend, and famous community psychologist, Dr. Vivian Brown (a member of the SAMHSA Women's Advisory Committee for years), ran around the country saying that it was not poor, disenfranchised women who needed more services than others, but rather poor, disenfranchised PEOPLE of either gender and all racial-ethnic groups. Vivian and her contemporaries got this message heard, and (fortunately) now more comprehensive and integrated health service design is the norm and policy at SAMHSA. The agency "got it" and has since been at the forefront of developing the kinds of integrated and comprehensive service networks that are needed by poor, disenfranchised groups.]

© 2008, The Measurement Group LLC. All rights reserved.

National Geriatric Society Meetings: 2008

American Geriatrics Society: April 30 -- May 4 in Washington, D.C., www.AmericanGeriatrics.org

Gerontological Society of America: November 21 -- 25 in National Harbor, Maryland (suburban Washington, D.C.), www.agingconference.com