Research

We contract with the Research Institute for Studies in Education (RISE) at Iowa State University to evaluate the CHARACTER COUNTS! (CC!) initiative in Iowa.

Phase I (2005)

The Iowa CHARACTER COUNTS! Evaluation Tool (ICCET) was developed.  The ICCET measures the effectiveness of a school’s implementation.  A sample of Iowa school sites implementing CC! were evaluated by RISE researchers.

Phase II (2008)

Development of the ICCET continued, and resulted in an inter-rater reliability of over 85 percent.  In addition, a self-assessment ICCET was developed and tested.

Phase III (2009)

Researchers compared school’s results of the ICCET with another survey tool, the Collective Responsibility of Excellence and Ethics (CREE 2.7). This comparison shows that schools that implement CC! at a proficient or better level would score significantly higher on several CREE categories than schools not implementing CC! at a high level or schools not implementing a character education program.

Schools implementing CC! resulted in an improvement in:

• student moral and performance character
• student acceptance of differences and caring towards peers
• collective responsibility for class/school community
• ethical learning community for students

Phase IV 

Phase IV is underway and includes three concurrent components.

• Further testing of the ICCET Self-Assessment tool
• Revisions of school trainings facilitated by Character Counts In Iowa – using a school’s ICCET results to drive customized and researched-based trainings
• Utilizing the ICCET at field test schools