Research Question 2

Does participation in Cure Violence NYC increase the likelihood of high-risk individuals accessing mental health services by the end of 2024 compared to similar individuals in non-program neighborhoods as self-reported by participants?

The outcome variable for Question 2 is the number of males in the precinct between the age of 16 and 30 enrolled in mental health supportive services. It is an interval ratio variable. A participant is considered to have accessed mental health services if they have successfully attended at least one session with a licensed therapist. 

Measure

Ask 300 young people who have been referred to psychological services from the Cure Violence program and anonymously ask them, "Have you seen a psychologist in the past year?" How many times have you been there? "Those who complete the questionnaire will receive a $10 e-coupon (Pasli & Tumin, 2022).

Compare 300 young people from other neighborhoods with similar backgrounds, who may be on the police department's probation list, have been wounded in a hospital, or live in high-crime neighborhoods. When approaching them, they will pretend to do a "community health survey" and do not mention "curing violence" to prevent them from answering randomly because they know about the plan (Chang & Slopen, 2024).

The definition of a "high-risk" young person is clear，they must meet at least two criteria, such as having been caught in a violent crime in the last two years, being flagged by a community worker as a possible gang member, living in a neighborhood in the top 20 percent of the city's high-crime rates, or having been shot in the past year.

A multi-dimensional approach to data collection

Anonymous access to medical records of patients with violence-related trauma in collaboration with medical institutions. Request the police to provide non-sensitive data, such as crime type statistics and geothermal map analysis. Combined with the high-frequency visitor characteristics of community service agencies, a more comprehensive risk assessment framework can be established (Evans et al., 2021).

Tracking digital footprints requires ensuring explicit consent from people, geofencing to record movement in an area, analysing social media interactions related to gang culture, and using cell phone signals to count nighttime activity patterns. These methods are subject to the relevant data protection provisions.

Validity and Reliability

We have taken a number of steps to ensure the authenticity of our findings. First of all, before the questionnaire is officially distributed, community volunteers will be invited to fill in and give feedback on whether the questions are easy to understand, such as changing the professional term "psychological service utilization" to the colloquial "have you seen a psychologist", so as to avoid respondents answering randomly because they do not understand. To further improve the construct validity of our measurements, we included established scales commonly used in the field of psychology, such as the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), which has been widely validated to assess mental health status and psychological well-being. This helps to ensure that our questionnaire is effective in measuring relevant mental constructs.

All questionnaires are anonymous throughout the process, do not record private information such as name and address, only collect answers through encrypted links, and automatically issue a $10 e-coupon as a thank you after answering, which can not only reduce the risk of lying, but also increase the enthusiasm of participation. For possible contradictory answers (for example, someone ticks "I haven't seen a psychiatrist" but writes "went 3 times" in the open question), the system will automatically mark this kind of data, and analyze the reasons separately in the later stage - if it is an input error, you can contact me to correct it, and if it cannot be verified, the outliers will be eliminated to ensure the accuracy of the final analysis. In addition, minors need additional protections to participate: respondents aged 16-17 must provide an electronic receipt of parental signature, and a link to the questionnaire will be sent to the guardian's email address to ensure parents' right to know (Araiza, 2019).

In practice, it is planned to send a link to the questionnaire to both groups of people in January 2024 via SMS and email, with SMS (since the target group is mostly young men and mobile phone usage is high), and email is used as a backup channel. Reminders are automatically pushed twice on the 2nd and 5th days after sending, so as to avoid frequent interruptions .

Once the data collection is complete, the first step is to "collate the data". Use some statistical tools to check the basic information of the two groups, such as age, where they live, and whether they have a criminal record, to see if they are consistent. If it is found that there are significantly more people over the age of 25 in the comparison group than in the project group, some samples will be randomly deleted and then adjusted according to the proportion, so that the number of people and age groups in the two groups will be similar. Finally, it is necessary to compare the proportion of people in the two groups who "have been to a psychiatrist at least once".If the proportion of the program group is 30% and the control group is only 15% , and the statistical test shows that the difference is not accidental , then the difference is significant.

References

Araiza, I. (2019). Ethical issues working with vulnerable populations. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of methods for public scholarship . Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190274481.013.1

Chang, A. R., & Slopen, N. (2024). Racial and ethnic disparities for unmet needs by mental health condition: 2016 to 2021. Pediatrics, 153(1), e2023062286. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2023-062286

Evans, C. B. R., Stalker, K. C., & Brown, M. E. (2021). A systematic review of crime/violence and substance use prevention programs. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 56, 101513. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2020.101513

Pasli, M., & Tumin, D. (2022). Children's unmet need for mental health care within and outside metropolitan areas. Pediatrics & Neonatology, 63(5), 512–519. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedneo.2022.03.018