The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project is the first major opportunity to use a behavioral economics lens to look at programs that serve poor and vulnerable people in the United States. Working with the Texas Office of the Attorney General´s Child Support Division, the BIAS team explored ways to increase the number of […]
This report provides detailed summaries of major research investments by OPRE’s Division of Family Strengthening (DFS) along with brief overviews of past projects. The featured projects cover topics that include strengthening relationships within families, supporting fatherhood, nurturing children through their families, reducing teen pregnancy, and supporting youth in their transition to adulthood. The report also […]
In an effort to improve the health and well-being of hard to reach, under served, and vulnerable populations and advance the prevention of IPV, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) invested in a pioneering effort to evaluate eight diverse IPV prevention programs for immigrants and refugees. LTG Associates was the National Program Office. Strengthening What Works […]
Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) was a yearlong voluntary marriage education program to help strengthen couples' relationships. SHM had small sustained positive effects on marital quality more than a year after the program ended but did not achieve its objectives of leading more couples to stay together or improving children’s well-being. MDRC SHM Overview Link
This paper presents findings from in-depth interviews with 16 couples who participated in the Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) program. Couples reported benefiting from SHM’s focus on communication and conflict management, but financial needs and lack of social supports placed stress on their relationships throughout their tenure in SHM. MDRC Overview Link
The Exploratory Study of Decision Making in Low-Income Couples (CDM) was designed to gather information that may ultimately help shape content, service delivery, and outcome measurement in programs serving economically disadvantaged families, particularly parents eligible for public assistance and social services. The study uses survey data, direct observation of couple interaction, and physiological measurement to […]
Overview The Fragile Families and Welfare Reform project looked at the conditions and capabilities of vulnerable mothers and fathers in the years following enactment of PRWORA and examined the complex relationships between this new legislation and families’ economic and non-economic wellbeing. The project estimated the composition of the actual and eligible welfare caseload, how unwed […]
The Measuring Couple Relationships agreement transferred funds from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to support activities of the NICHD Family and Child Well-Being Network, through the Network’s grant at Child Trends (HD30930/Moore), to review the state of the art in measuring couple […]
The Strengthening Families with Children Born Out-of-Wedlock project was jointly funded by ACF’s Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation and Office of Child Support Enforcement. Researchers conducting this study utilized research, information obtained from field observations, and expert consultation to develop a conceptual framework for the design and evaluation of interventions to improve the quality […]
The Supporting Healthy Marriage in Step-Families project: (1) summarized and synthesized the existing literature concerning the characteristics of stepfamilies, (2) catalogued and documented existing marriage support and education programs focused on step/blended families, and (3) developed a conceptual framework to help guide future programmatic and research agendas aimed at stabilizing and supporting step-families, with a […]