BUILDING THE CAPACITY OF YOUTH AND FAMILIES THROUGH UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY COLLABORATIONS - THE DEVELOPMENT-IN-CONTEXT EVALUATION (DICE) MODEL

Millions of our nation's youth are at risk for involvement in crime an d violence, substance we and abuse, unsafe sex, school failure, lack o f job preparedness, and the problems associated with living in poverty . To address these issues, scholars and child advocates have called fo r comprehensive, integrated and community-based responses that build c ommunity capacities for sustaining effective programs. Based on a mode l for university-community collaboration in the evaluation of youth-se rving programs, the Development-In-Context Evaluation (DICE) model a m eans is presented to promote such community empowerment. Building on t he work of Weiss and her colleagues, the DICE model involves a communi ty-collaborative approach to evaluation, and to program design and imp lementation. The approach builds on the values of the community, engag es community members in issues identification, in evaluation design, i mplementation, data collection, and in decisions about how to use the results of the evaluation.