WITHDRAWN: The Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness: Trends of Evidence-Based Programs within Human Services

To help ensure program quality, federal, state and local governments are starting to require the use of evidence-based programs (Burkhardt et al., 2015). However, professionals often lack the time and resources to evaluate research literature and identify such interventions. The Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness’ Continuum of Evidence provides a repository of program reviews to assists professionals who work with military families identify evidence-based programs that enhance the well-being of Service members and their families. Empirical studies are reviewed according to the following criteria: Significant Effects; Sustained Effects; External Replication; Study Design; and Additional Criteria. Program placements include: Effective (RCT or Quasi); Promising; Unclear (+); Unclear (Ø) with No Evaluations or Mixed Results; Unclear (-); or Ineffective. The Clearinghouse has reviewed more than 950 programs. These programs target various populations; are implemented in different sectors; and focus on a wide range of topics.

Using the Clearinghouse’s database of programs, the present study seeks to determine the relationships among program placements, topics, and sectors using chi-square analysis. Research questions were, are programs in any particular sector more likely to demonstrate evidence of effectiveness or more likely to lack evidence; are programs that target any particular population more likely to demonstrate evidence of effectiveness; are programs that address certain topics more likely to demonstrate evidence of effectiveness?

A total of 663 behavioral health programs vetted by the Clearinghouse were used in the analysis, 324 obesity prevention programs were excluded. Levels of effectiveness were broken into four categories: (1) Evidence of Effectiveness (i.e., Effective, Promising, and Unclear +), (2) Conflicting Evidence (i.e., Unclear Ø with Mixed Results), (3) No Evidence, and (4) Evidence of Ineffectiveness (i.e., Unclear - and Ineffective). The largest portion (49%) of programs had Evidence of Effectiveness (N = 329); 11% (N=72) had Conflicting Evidence; 35% (N=236) had No Evidence; and 5% of programs (N=26) had Evidence of Ineffectiveness. Results indicate that programs that are community-based are more likely to have evidence of effectiveness (p = .005), programs with conflicting evidence were more likely to be school-based programs (p = .04), and Faith-based programs were more likely to have no evidence of effectiveness (p<.001). Programs covering behavioral problems (p<.001), depression (p<.001), emotional competency (p=.018), and social competency (p=.008) were more likely to have evidence of effectiveness. Findings will highlight potential gaps within existing programming to inform researchers and policymakers.