This report discusses findings from an evaluation of eight organizations that implemented the Building Strong Families (BSF) program, a program designed to teach relationship skills to unmarried, romantically-involved couples who were expecting or had recently had a baby. For the evaluation, over 5,000 interested couples were randomly assigned to either a BSF group that could participate in the program or a control group that could not. Data was collected on BSF's impacts on couples about 15 months after they applied for the program, focusing on the stability and quality of the couples'…
This report is a technical supplement to the 15-month impact report for the Building Strong Families (BSF) evaluation, a study that explored the effectiveness of providing services to improve the relationships of unmarried parents. It provides additional detail about the research design, analytic methods, and variable construction that were used for the 15-month analysis. Chapter 1 begins with an overview of the research design. It then describes BSF sample intake procedures, including eligibility determination and the random assignment process. The eight local BSF programs enrolled couples…
This report discusses the implementation of the Building Strong Families (BSF) program in eight organizations. The BSF project was launched in 2002 to develop, implement, and rigorously test voluntary interventions aimed at strengthening the families of unmarried couples with children. BSF programs were implemented by non-profit and public agencies at 12 locations in seven States, and enrolled more than 5,000 volunteer couples, who were randomly assigned by the BSF research team to an intervention or control group. The intervention featured up to 42 hours of multi-couple group sessions led…
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This updated edition explains what program evaluation is, why evaluation is important, how to conduct an evaluation and understand the results, how to report evaluation findings, and how to use evaluation results to improve programs that benefit children and families. (Author abstract)
The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) sponsored a site exchange series during late spring and summer 2009. During these two- to three-day exchanges, a "host" grantee--working with OFA's technical assistance team --designed a site visit and learning session for a small group of visiting grantees. Site exchanges focused on different types of community-based partnerships that Healthy Marriage grantees have formed to better engage various high-priority populations such as couples, youth and young adults, and low-income families. This report (the final of 3 in the series) summarizes how grantees…
The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) sponsored a site exchange series during late spring and summer 2009. During these two- to three-day exchanges, a "host" grantee--working with OFA's technical assistance team --designed a site visit and learning session for a small group of visiting grantees. Site exchanges focused on different types of community-based partnerships that Healthy Marriage grantees have formed to better engage various high-priority populations such as couples, youth and young adults, and low-income families. In support of the demonstration grantees' efforts to strengthen…
The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) sponsored a site exchange series during late spring and summer 2009. During these two- to three-day exchanges, a "host" grantee--working with OFA's technical assistance team--designed a site visit and learning session for a small group of visiting grantees. Site exchanges focused on different types of community-based partnerships that Healthy Marriage grantees have formed to better engage various high-priority populations such as couples, youth and young adults, and low-income families. This report (2 of 3 in the series) summarizes the knowledge gained…
