Elizabeth Eggins

Reducing Truancy and Fostering a Willingness to Attend School: Results from a Randomized Trial of a Police-School Partnership Program

Truancy is a major social issue that is linked to a range of poor outcomes across the life course, including poor educational outcomes, drug and alcohol abuse, and antisocial behavior. Interventions that seek to reduce truancy problems range from school-based police officers to programs that reward good attendance to community-based interventions. This study reports primary outcome results of a randomized trial of a collaborative, police–school partnership that sought to reduce truancy and increase students’ willingness to attend school. Using school attendance and students’ self-report survey data, we find that the police–school partnership intervention shows promise for reducing truancy and improving students’ willingness to attend school. We conclude that police–school partnerships that foster the willingness of young people to attend school should be examined in future evaluation research and be considered in the development of truancy prevention programs.

Truancy Intervention Reduces Crime: Results from a Randomized Field Trial

Educational attainment is a fundamental cornerstone to success throughout the life-course. As a result, ensuring that young people remain in school and are not truant is critical. Although the importance of truancy as a risk factor for many adverse outcomes, including crime, has been well-documented, much less methodologically rigorous work has been undertaken to evaluate potentially promising prevention and intervention strategies. This paper uses a randomized field trial method to test how a partnership between police and schools targeting truancy impacts offending in a sample of high-risk truanting young people. We find that the truancy intervention reduces offending and we discuss the implications for practice and directions for future research.

The Coproduction of Truancy Control: Results from a Randomized Trial of a Police–Schools Partnership Program

Objectives: To evaluate, under randomized field trial conditions, the deterrent effects of a police–school partnership, called the Ability School Engagement Program (ASEP). The partnership sought to co-produce truancy reduction by actively engaging parents and their truanting children in a group conference dialogue that was designed to increase parental and child awareness of the truancy laws (and the consequences of noncompliance), and thereby foster students’ willingness to attend school. Methods: Using a randomized field trial design, 102 truanting young people were randomly allocated to a control, business-as-usual condition (n = 51), or the ASEP experimental condition (n = 51). In this paper, we use mixed model ANOVA and multiple regression analysis of self-report survey data from both students and their parents to assess differences between the experimental and control group on parental perceptions of prosecution likelihood and student willingness to attend school. We use qualitative analysis of the group conference transcripts to examine how the intervention affected these factors. Results: Our results demonstrate that the police–school partnership intervention increased parental awareness of prosecution likelihood, which moderated students’ self-reported willingness to attend school. Conclusions: We conclude that police–school partnerships that engage parents and their children to better understand the laws pertaining to school attendance are a promising approach for co-producing the reduction of truancy.