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The National Congregations Study (NCS) is a national survey effort to gather information about America's congregations. The first wave of the NCS took place in 1998, and the study was repeated in 2006-07, 2012, and 2018-19. The NCS tracks continuity and change among American congregations, and each NCS wave also explores new subjects.

With information from 5,333 congregations collected over a span of more than 20 years, the NCS helps us better understand many aspects of congregational life in the United States, and how congregations are changing in the 21st century. The NCS contributes to knowledge about American religion by collecting information about a wide range of congregations' characteristics and activities at different points in time.

In all four waves, the NCS was conducted in conjunction with the General Social Survey (GSS). The 1998, 2006, 2012, and 2018 waves of the GSS asked respondents who attend religious services to name their congregation, thus generating a nationally representative sample of religious congregations. Researchers then located these congregations. In 2006, the sample included re-interviews of a subset of congregations that participated in 1998, and in 2018-19, the sample included re-interviews of a subset of congregations that participated in 2012.

A key informant at each congregation - a minister, priest, rabbi, or other staff person or leader - provided each congregation's information via a one-hour interview conducted either over the phone or in-person. The survey gathered information on many topics, including the congregation's leadership, social composition, structure, activities, and programming. The NCS gathers information about worship, programs, staffing, community activities, demographics, funding, and many other characteristics of American congregations. Respondents of the NCS survey were asked to describe the worship service and programs sponsored by the congregation other than the main worship services, including religious education classes, musical groups, and recreational programs. Informants described the type of building in which the congregation met, whether it belonged to the congregation, and whether visitors came just to view the building's architecture or artwork. Congregations were geocoded, and selected census variables are included in this study.

This study evaluated CeaseFire, a program of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention. The evaluation had both outcome and process components.

The outcome evaluation assessed the program's impact on shootings and killings in selected CeaseFire sites. Two types of crime data were compiled by the research team: Time Series Data (Dataset 1) and Shooting Incident Data (Dataset 2). Dataset 1 is comprised of aggregate month/year data on all shooting, gun murder, and persons shot incidents reported to Chicago police for CeaseFire's target beats and matched sets of comparison beats between January 1991 and December 2006, resulting in 1,332 observations. Dataset 2 consists of data on 4,828 shootings that were reported in CeaseFire's targeted police beats and in a matched set of comparison beats for two-year periods before and after the implementation of the program (February 1998 to April 2006).

The process evaluation involved assessing the program's operations and effectiveness. Researchers surveyed three groups of CeaseFire program stakeholders: employees, representatives of collaborating organizations, and clients.

The three sets of employee survey data examine such topics as their level of involvement with clients and CeaseFire activities, their assessments of their clients' problems, and their satisfaction with training and management practices. A total of 154 employees were surveyed: 23 outreach supervisors (Dataset 3), 78 outreach workers (Dataset 4), and 53 violence interrupters (Dataset 5).

The six sets of collaborating organization representatives data examine such topics as their level of familiarity and contact with the CeaseFire program, their opinions of CeaseFire clients, and their assessments of the costs and benefits of being involved with CeaseFire. A total of 230 representatives were surveyed: 20 business representatives (Dataset 6), 45 clergy representatives (Dataset 7), 26 community representatives (Dataset 8), 35 police representatives (Dataset 9), 36 school representatives (Dataset 10), and 68 service organization representatives (Dataset 11).

The Client Survey Data (Dataset 12) examine such topics as clients' involvement in the CeaseFire program, their satisfaction with aspects of life, and their opinions regarding the role of guns in neighborhood life. A total of 297 clients were interviewed.

In collaboration with community- and system-based partners, the current study used an experimental design to test the impact of phone outreach from community-based agencies to women exposed to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) compared to phone referrals provided by system-based unit (i.e., the Victim Assistance Unit of the DPD or the City Attorney's Office) in a racially and ethnically diverse sample of women whose cases have come to the attention of the criminal justice system. The phone outreach was informed by an interdisciplinary team involving both system- and community-based team members. Participants, who were randomly selected to receive outreach or treatment-as-usual, were interviewed at three time points: after an incident of IPV was reported to the police (T1), 6 months after T1, and 12 months after T1. The study addressed three primary roles. First, investigators evaluated the effectiveness of a coordinated, community-based outreach program in improving criminal justice and victim safety and empowerment outcomes for IPV victims using a longitudinal, randomized control design. Second, victim and case characteristics that moderated outcomes were identified. Third, the influence of spatial characteristics on criminal justice outcomes was evaluated.

Healthy Families New York (HFNY), which was based on the Healthy Families America (HFA) model, was established as a strengths-based, intensive home visitation program with the explicit goals of promoting positive parenting skills and parent-child interaction; preventing child abuse and neglect; supporting optimal prenatal care, and child health and development; and improving parent's self-sufficiency.

In 2000, a randomized controlled trial was initiated at three sites with the HFNY home visiting program. Families eligible for HFNY at each site were randomly assigned to either an intervention group that was offered HFNY services or to a control group that was given information on and referral to appropriate services other than home visiting. Baseline interviews were conducted with 1,173 of the eligible women (intervention, n=579; control, n=594), and follow up interviews at Years 1, 2, and 3. In addition to data gathered during the follow up interviews, information regarding study participants' involvement in reports of child maltreatment was also extracted and coded from Child Protection Services records.

For the current study, mothers in both the intervention and control groups were re-interviewed at the time of the target child's seventh birthday. Interviews (Dataset 1: Mother Interview Data, n=942) included information about parenting, the child, earnings, and household composition. Interviewers also completed face-to-face assessments (Dataset 2: Target Child Interview Data) with 800 of the children who were born and reached the age of 7 at the time of interview. The target child interviews assessed children's receptive vocabulary skills, emotional health, self-regulatory abilities, and problem behaviors. The research team also extracted or obtained administrative data pertaining to Child Protective Service reports, foster care placements, federal and state supported benefits, and programs services and costs (Datasets 3-8).