CRIME & DELINQUENCY / JULY 2002Pearson et al. / COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL PROGRAMS The Effects of Behavioral/Cognitive-Behavioral Programs on Recidivism

The CDATE project coded studies of treatment/intervention programs in prison, jail, probation, or parole settings reported from1968 through 1996.Meta-analyseswere con-ducted on the 69 primary research studies on the effectiveness of behavioral and cognitive-behavioral treatment in reducing recidivism for offenders. Results on this het-erogeneous collection of studies show that this treatment is associated with reduced recidivism rates. However, this effect is mainly due to cognitive-behavioral interventions rather than to standard behavior modification approaches. The specific types of pro-grams shown to be effective include cognitive-behavioral social skills development pro-grams and cognitive skills (Reasoning and Rehabilitation) programs. In 1994 the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded the Cor-rectional Drug Abuse Treatment Effectiveness (CDATE) project for 4 years to develop a database and conduct meta-analyses on correctional treatment evaluation studies completed between January 1, 1968 and December 31, 1996. Researchers have, over the past 20 years, begun to use meta-analysis to assess the research literature on corrections-based treatment programs. Glass, McGaw, and Smith (1981, p. 21) distinguish primary analysis (the original research study’s statistical analysis of data), secondary analysis (a subsequent study’s reanalysis of the data from the original study, usually with better statistical techniques or to ask new questions of the original data), an