Until the past few years, our nation's approach to designing federal programs for preschool-age children lacked coherence and paid little attention to what had worked (and not worked) in the past. In this article, the authors propose that credible information useful for designing effective programs will require the ongoing, systematic development…

A planning model to improve performance in generating positive terminations of Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) participants is described. Sponsors can improve performance by selecting participants with particular characteristics and altering types of services. This approach is useful for any social services which result in…

Relevance of the intersection of sociology, statistics, and public policy to the study of quality control in three family assistance programs--food stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and Medicaid--is reviewed using a study by the National Academy of Sciences of methods for improving quality control systems. (SLD)