Reassessing findings from the Fast Track study: problems of method and analysis
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Reassessing findings from the Fast Track study: problems of method and analysis E. Michael Foster
Published online: 11 January 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract Objectives A 2010 article by the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group considers an important social and public policy problem: can early psychosocial intervention prevent delinquency? The article examines the effects of the Fast Track preventive intervention on youth arrests and self-reported delinquent behavior through age 19. The article reports that the intervention reduced court-recorded juvenile arrest activity as well as a range of other disparate effects. Methods This comment assesses the methodology employed in the article. Results The original article suffers from a range of methodological problems. First and foremost, the article includes a large number of statistical tests and highlights only a subset that are statistically significant. As this article demonstrates, these findings likely involve “false discoveries” or chance findings. Uncertainty about the study’s findings is increased still further by problems of randomization, the treatment of site, the handling of missing data, and the inclusion of a collider as a covariate in key analyses. A proper assessment of the study’s meaning and implications has been impeded by inaccuracies in how the study’s methodology has been described over time. Conclusions The original article offers chance findings, suffers from methodological errors and builds on a flawed study design. As a result, it is impossible to conclude that “that a comprehensive preventive intervention can prevent juvenile arrest rates”. What the intervention would accomplish were it implemented in a new community is unknown. Keywords Prevention . Arrests . Delinquency . Longitudinal . Juveniles . Methodology
This article is commentary for article “Fast track intervention effects on youth arrests and delinquency”, published in Volume 6, Issue 2, under doi:10.1007/s11292-010-9091-7. E. M. Foster (*) Department of Health Care Organization and Policy, Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA e-mail: [email protected]
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E.M. Foster
The recent article by the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group (2010) considers an important social and public policy problem: can early psychosocial intervention prevent delinquency? As noted elsewhere, that the intervention was quite costly does not preclude cost-effectiveness (Foster et al. 2006). The costs of crime and delinquency to society are enormous (Cohen 2005). For that reason, the questions considered in the article deserve serious attention. Unfortunately, the article suffers from a range of methodological problems that make it difficult or impossible to conclude that such prevention is possible. One can identify at least five serious problems with the analysis. The first and most serious problem is that the paper includes an enormous number of statistical tests and generally highl
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