 Evaluation of outcomes of Mississippi’s Child Advocacy Studies (CAST) initiativeTheodore P. Cross and Yu-Ling Chiu Children and Youth Services Review, 2025, vol. 178, issue C Abstract: Child Advocacy Studies (CAST) is an academic program in the United States responding to the need in colleges and graduate schools for education on child maltreatment. As of this writing more than 100 American colleges and universities offer CAST courses or a multi-course CAST academic program. Conducting research to evaluate Mississippi’s statewide CAST initiative, the authors gathered data from students in CAST courses in 9 colleges and universities in the state, and 10 non-CAST courses in related fields in 3 Mississippi colleges and universities that did not offer CAST. Most analyses showed advantages for CAST students over non-CAST students on child protection knowledge and judgments in response to child abuse related scenarios and vignettes. CAST students showed significant improvements from the beginning to the end of their CAST course in their self-rating of their skills in child protection and in their judgment in response to vignettes about child maltreatment. This study offers evidence for the value of a CAST program. Keywords: Child Advocacy Studies; CAST; Undergraduate education; Child abuse and neglect; Child protection (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:178:y:2025:i:c:s0190740925003925 DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2025.108509 Access Statistics for this article Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.