Eliminating Disparities & Reducing Disproportionality:
The Role of Research

Research offers public child welfare agencies meaningful information about disparities experienced by children, youth and families. Research findings from monitoring and evaluation enable the agency to use informed decision-making in determining which interventions will help eliminate disparities. Research spurs innovation and facilitates continuous improvement by outlining what is needed to improve data collection methodologies on disparity and disproportionality issues.

While it is true that research can be expensive, public child welfare agencies are able to use money from IV-E funding that is set aside for program administration and training to research disparity issues at the agency. Funding research on disparities issues can facilitate the agency’s understanding of how to create equity for all through improved program operation, administration and training effectiveness. Public child welfare agencies can also consider partnering with philanthropies and community stakeholders to identify and leverage needed resources for research on the issue.

Agencies should be willing to make the research findings available to partners and stakeholders. Information learned from the research findings helps the agency gain a better understanding of the issue. The information can also prompt instructive questions and enable the agency to develop solutions. For instance, the agency would not hide or avoid baseline data that revealed entry and exit disparities for children of color; instead it would use these data to probe questions that would provide understanding as to how and why this has been happening in the agency.

Agencies should carefully think through the research questions to be studied, being careful that research questions are well designed, objective and avoid bias or personal agendas. Some useful research questions to study on the disparity and disproportionality issue might include:

• Which best practices are effective at eliminating disparities?
• What training and professional development measures are effective at eliminating disparities?
• What are the barriers that the agency faces in eliminating disparities?
• What are the agency’s areas of strength? And how can these strengths be effectively used to eliminate disparities?
• How do other issues such as poverty relate to disparities and disproportionality? What is the relationship?
• What kind of research is most appropriate for better understanding disparities and disproportionality issues?
• What capacity is needed to support a comprehensive plan to eliminate disparate treatment?