Research, Evaluation, and Learning are at the center of all projects undertaken by ICS. Our team of researchers has broad experience in evaluation methodologies and designs. This is expertise that has been applied across all of our content areas, over multiple projects, with a wide range of partner organizations.
Our work has taken place at all scales, starting with program specific interventions and including national-level evaluations of policies associated with the commercial sexual exploitation of children. In all of our research and evaluation projects, we include a dissemination plan that draws upon our expertise in communications. This includes the broad range out outputs that come from research, from peer-reviewed journal publications to tweets.
As one current project example, our affiliated staff are working with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), to examine the Impact of Safe Harbor Laws on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Minors, using a mixed-method approach that blends quantitative and qualitative analyses. The central analysis of this evaluation offers a quasi-experimental longitudinal design to compare states that have implemented safe harbor laws with those that have not (as yet) in terms of 1) reducing the number of arrests among prostituted youth and 2) increasing the number of sexually exploited referrals to social services.