Developing Evaluation Approaches for an Anti-Human Trafficking Housing Program

The increasing number of anti-trafficking organizations and funding for anti-trafficking services have greatly out-paced evaluative efforts resulting in critical knowledge gaps, which have been underscored by recent recommendations for the development of greater evaluation capacity in the anti-trafficking field. In response to these calls, this paper reports on the development and feasibility testing of an evaluation protocol to generate practice-based evidence for an anti-trafficking transitional housing program. Guided by formative evaluation and evaluability frameworks, our practitioner-researcher team had two aims: (1) develop an evaluation protocol, and (2) test the protocol with a feasibility trial. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of only a few reports concerning anti-trafficking housing program evaluations, particularly one with many foreign-national survivors as evaluation participants. In addition to presenting evaluation findings, the team herein documented decisions and strategies related to conceptualizing, designing, and conducting the evaluation to offer approaches for future evaluations

Evaluation of the TB Ag MPT64 rapid test for the identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex

Rapid identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex in cultured samples is important for starting appropriate treatment. We evaluated the performance of the TB Ag MPT64 Rapid test directly from 131 BACTEC (TM) MGIT (TM) 960 culture-positive samples: 113 were identified as M. tuberculosis complex and 18 as non-tuberculous mycobacteria. The sensitivity and specificity of the TB Ag MPT64 Rapid test were respectively 96.5% and 100% compared to the polymerase chain reaction. The overall concordance of the TB Ag MPT64 Rapid test was 969%. The TB Ag MPT64 Rapid test is easy, sensitive, and does not require a high level of skill or specific equipment

A pulsed light reactor for molecular weight control in free-radical polymerization

A new controlled polymerization reactor is introduced. The reactor design is based on the principles of pulsed initiation polymerization. The 1 l reactor is equipped with a high-voltage UV-stroboscope, the frequency of which can be raised up to 250 Hz. In this reactor pulsed initiation polymerizations of n-butyl acrylate were performed. Results indicate that the use of high pulse frequencies in this set-up may resolve problems associated with chain transfer to polymer in the determination of propagation rate coefficients for acrylates at temperatures above 30 °C

A pulsed light reactor for molecular weight control in free-radical polymerization

A new controlled polymerization reactor is introduced. The reactor design is based on the principles of pulsed initiation polymerization. The 1 l reactor is equipped with a high-voltage UV-stroboscope, the frequency of which can be raised up to 250 Hz. In this reactor pulsed initiation polymerizations of n-butyl acrylate were performed. Results indicate that the use of high pulse frequencies in this set-up may resolve problems associated with chain transfer to polymer in the determination of propagation rate coefficients for acrylates at temperatures above 30 °C