The new Peabody Research Institute (PRI) has been created to conduct research on children and families using a permanent staff of researchers and a high level of methodological expertise. Staff will collaborate with and support faculty on grants, including education research. The new center will be initially staffed with researchers moving from the Center for Evaluation Research and Methodology (CERM), a research institute formerly under the auspices of the Vanderbilt Institute of Public Policy Studies.
Under the direction of Mark Lipsey, research professor, and Dale Farran, professor of education and psychology, the PRI will bring with it a number of active projects, including several using meta-analysis of research on the effectiveness of substance abuse treatment for adolescents; the development of evidence-based practice guidelines for juvenile justice programs in Arizona, funded by the Arizona Supreme Court; the development of evidence-based practice guidelines for juvenile justice programs in Tennessee, funded by the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services and Juvenile Justice; an evaluation of the effects of a middle school conflict resolution program in Ohio, funded by the Department of Education; a meta-analysis of predictors of school success and failure from longitudinal studies, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; the analysis of achievement gains for pre-K children in classrooms using the OWL curriculum (Opening the World of Learning), funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; development of intervention fidelity measures for a pre-K curriculum intervention, funded by the Department of Education; and the effects of a pre-K math curriculum when scaled-up for multi-site implementation, funded by the Department of Education and State University of New York, Buffalo.