Abstract
- The primary purpose of this paper is to present what we hope is a reasonably good outcome-oriented evaluation of a juvenile drug treatment court. Like all evaluations, this one seeks to establish – on as systematic and rigorous a basis as possible – the merit, worth, or value (Scriven, 1999) of the program at hand. As we will see, this effort is difficult enough to test our ingenuity as well as to occupy available time and budget. But another question is very close to the surface here and our hope is to bring it up for a closer examination: Is it important that we attempt to establish why this program works or doesn’t work; is meritorious, worthwhile, and valuable or not? This desire to understand rather than simply describe may generally be referred to as “the theory question” and is surprisingly contentious in the evaluation field even as it is almost sacrosanct in most disciplinary research.