Dr. Duder has taught MSW research courses on program evaluation and quantitative methods for quite a few years, and really enjoys working with students on tutorials or research projects – she has supervised so many research papers and theses over the years that she has completely lost count! She enjoys playing with new ideas and methods; for example, she used a Delphi procedure for her MSW research, and designed a simulation game to evaluate a negative income tax for her PhD thesis. In courses and research projects, she has used Q-sorts, meta-analyses, tree diagrams and concept mapping. She has worked with colleagues on many projects, including studies of permanency planning, parent finding and the effect of agency funding formulas on adoption practice, as well as predictors of hospital length of stay, using the Person-in-Environment (PIE) system to measure the severity of psychosocial problems. She regularly attends the journal watch meetings at the CRCF, and has written many article reviews for the Research Watch archives.
Dr. Duder believes that good research and program evaluation can be very effective strategies in dealing with today’s worrisome political and social problems.
Her current research interests include:
Program evaluation, including cost-benefit analysis, to find ways of preventing social problems, and of increasing social justice by diverting resources to the disadvantaged.