Evaluation

The chief justification for the existence of men's treatment is that it is effective in stopping abuse. There are at least sixteen evaluation studies demonstrating that men's programs are, to some extent, effective. However, our knowledge about breadth of success over different forms of abuse, durability of success over time, relative effectiveness of different techniques or across different types of clients is scanty at best. Moreover, because sixteen or even a hundred programs can be proven effective, does not mean any given program is effective. All programs need to be able to evaluate and monitor their effectiveness in an ongoing fashion to guide program development and change. From a research point of view, it makes sense for programs to have a standardized evaluation format that permits the pooling of data to answer more detailed questions regarding effectiveness. Effective evaluation is not something that can be done by clinical staff in their spare time. Additional funding is required for each program or as a province-wide evaluation project to accomplish this task.