Research carried out by several public policy concentrators who studied various issues before they graduated from Brown last May has been turned over to the state agencies that provided the data for their theses
Reports of thousands of Rhode Island domestic violence cases beckoned to public policy student Monica Karuturi last year.
One of her professors, an epidemiologist for the state Department of Health's program to prevent violence against women, pointed her to the cases and the state’s mandatory arrest policy.
"She told me she had all this data that hadn’t been looked at" and wondered whether the policy was working, said Karuturi.
Karuturi’s research, and that of a half dozen other public policy concentrators who studied various issues before they graduated from Brown last May, have been turned over to the state agencies that provided the data for their theses. Their goal was to inform the agencies about what is working and not working.
This year, public policy seniors examined the treatment of Rhode Islanders, ranging from children in the foster care system to non-English speaking Latinos in the criminal justice system. They gathered information from agencies as varied as the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, and the Department of Health.
"The students are looking at things that we just don’t have the resources to look at," said Wendy Verhoek-Oftedahl, assistant professor of community health and the epidemiologist for the state Department of Health.
Karuturi’s work provided the first statewide look at Rhode Island’s Domestic Violence Prevention Act, which stipulates that physical assault on the part of the offender, regardless of whether victim injury results, is sufficient to determine probable cause for arrest.
Submitted to the state’s Supreme Court Domestic Violence Training and Monitoring Unit, the information will be used to inform future police officer training, Verhoek-Oftedahl said.
"Overall [the policy] is being implemented well," said Karuturi, who researched more than 3,000 cases from 1999. "But there is room for improvement."
Among the areas Karuturi highlighted for improvement were cases in which the suspect is absent when the victim is giving the report; cases in which the victim is under the influence of alcohol; and cases in which a restraining order is violated. Such situations resulted in lower arrest rates, she said.
Karuturi’s classmate Sarah Cook hopes her findings will be used as well. Cook looked at Providence elementary schools that have relatively low per-pupil spending and high scores on standardized tests. An important factor in relation to student performance, she said, was spending on health services. Spending more money on health services seemed to correlate with higher attendance rates and higher test scores.
She submitted her findings to the Department of Education. "I hope that perhaps the state department can look at patterns of spending that seemed to be effective and share that information with the schools," Cook said.
For her public policy research, Rachel Flood looked at younger children, specifically those receiving subsidies through the state’s childcare assistance program.
Participation in the program was inconsistent among ethnic groups, said Flood, whose findings were submitted to the Department of Human Services. Subsidy use was two times lower among those eligible Rhode Islanders for whom English was a second language.
But further research is needed, said Flood. "My hope is that I’ve teased them enough that they’ll delve into it."
The information used by public policy concentrators was readily available through state agencies; Cook found the data she needed on the Rhode Island Department of Education Web site.
"It’s amazing how much information they have available," said Cook, who is now working as a research analyst for an education reform consulting company in Boston. "It reinforces the importance of continuing to collect data."