Evaluating Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Programs

• NCJ Number: 241930
• Journal: National Institute of Justice Journal Issue: 272 Dated: September 2013 Pages: 41-44
• Author(s): Beth Pearsall
• Date Published: July 2013
• Length: 4 pages
• Publication Series: NIJ Journal
• Grant Number(s): 2009-MU-MU-0002
• Agencies: NIJ
• Publication Type: Technical Assistance; Program/Project Evaluation; Instructional Material (Programmed)

Annotation

This toolkit provides guidance for a self-evaluation of sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) programs, in which specially trained nurses provide crisis intervention and emotional support, health care, injury detection, and treatment for sexual assault victims, as well as the collection of forensic medical evidence in the setting of a hospital emergency department or community-based clinic.

Abstract

This user-friendly toolkit guides SANE practitioners through a six-step evaluative process and suggests ways to use the findings to improve practice and a program's positive impact on the reporting, investigation, and prosecution of sexual assault cases. The toolkit first presents three evaluation designs. The Pre-SANE/Post-SANE evaluation design compares how far sexual assault cases progress in the criminal justice system before and after the implementation of the SANE program. The Post-SANE-Only evaluation compares how far sexual assault cases progress in the criminal justice system after the SANE program compared with data from communities without SANE programs. The Ongoing Evaluation design begins charting prosecution outcomes from the point when evaluation begins. This design will not be able to make comparisons immediately, but over time will be able to make comparisons with other communities. The six-step evaluation is as follows: understand the evaluation design; identify the evaluation questions; establish cooperative agreements; sample cases and collect appropriate data that answer evaluation questions; analyze the data; and interpret the results. Each of these steps is briefly discussed. 2 notes and 1 figure