Ongoing Research and Evaluation of Chicago CRED

N3 proposes the following research objectives for the next phase of our partnership with CRED to more completely understand the short-, mid-, and long-term impact of CRED on its participants and the community. Continue participant observations with CRED on the South Side. Since its inception, N3’s approach has entailed an engaged research process that combines rigorous social science with the lived experiences, embodied knowledge, and expertise of our partners, in pursuit of solving community problems. With CRED, this process began by embedding our research team at CRED’s Roseland programming hubs and outreach office, collaboratively developing research protocols with input from CRED staff and participants, and maintaining an ongoing and open dialogue about all aspects of the research. This resulted in the development of trusting relationships between not only N3 and CRED staff, but also our research team and CRED participants. This sort of engaged process promotes transparency, amplifies our partners’ voices, and ensures that all findings are rooted not simply in the best social science research practices, but also (as much as possible) reflective of our partners’ lived experiences. We believe this intentionally cooperative process has facilitated much of our research success to date, and the continuation of such a partnership is vital to all ongoing research activities. Advance the quasi-experimental analysis of CRED participants’ experience with gunshot victimization and involvement on past, present, and subsequent cohorts of participants. As of this writing, N3 is finalizing initial results from the quasi-experimental analyses of participants who entered the program from 2016 onward, with an emphasis on those who began in 2019 or later. The inclusion of participants prior to January 2020 in statistical analyses was a decision reached between CRED and N3 to offset the COVID disruptions that limited participant recruitment and lowered the sample size of the study. The quasi-experimental approach developed during the initial grant period entails a quasi-experimental design that matched CRED participants against a nearly statistically identical comparison group using administrative records; comparison matching was based on key indicators such as age, race/ethnicity, gang involvement, and prior involvement in violent and guninvolved crime (as indicated through arrest data). Analyses then compared observed changes in CRED participants’ behaviors before and after their program involvement against those in the comparison group. Initial results showed decreases in (a) overall level of involvement in gun violence, (b) gunshot victimization, and (c) gun or violence-related arrests. However, only the decline in gun or violencerelated arrests is “statistically significant,” meaning that the observed change in participants’ behavior can be attributed to CRED.