A few months ago we challenged child advocacy organizations to do a better job of showing Return on Investment (ROI)—Keeping Score in Child Well-Being: Why it Matters—from their research and surveys on critical issues in child well-being.

I have generally found such poor communication of results from important research on children’s rights and well-being, and such miserable follow-up in leveraging the findings for the benefit of children that I pledge to do “What ever happened to” research on this major area of under-achievement. I’ll report those findings in this column.

My personal challenge to child advocacy researchers was: “Show us your battle plan post-press release and press notices. Show us the return on investment for children. It’s time for true accountability.”

Last week, Julie Farber , Research Director of Children’s Rights, Inc, responded with a thorough and most encouraging report on their Hitting the Marc study, which is posted on the Connect for Kids site.

The Children’s Rights tracking report is an excellent model. It meets the challenge of research accountability. And there is much more to come in leveraging those research results. The legislative interest alone represents significant ROI.

Putting together a Research Scorecard, as Julie Farber did, is hard work. Anyone else ready to meet the challenge? Let us know! Contact me at scorecard@connectforkids.org.

- Hershel Sarbin