This guide provides definitions and instructions for constructing and using the logic model worksheets to help Child Support Enforcement agencies specify—clearly and concretely—what their projects are trying to accomplish, for whom, with what resources, in what context, facing what barriers. It will also help agencies to specify the data needed to show whether the project has been effective in achieving its goals.

The logic model worksheets are meant as a guide for project staff and evaluators. You may adapt them to fit your project. The boxes on the forms may be too small to include all the information you want to provide. You may use a blank page and label it with titles corresponding to appropriate boxes on the logic model worksheets. In addition to the detailed worksheets, we recommend developing a one-page logic model that highlights key features of your project in addition to any more detailed/descriptive information you may produce. The one-page format is a helpful tool to give those who will review and rate your proposal a good overview of your project. It is also a helpful tool to educate your staff and partners of the thrust of your proposal; equivalent to an outline upon which you would describe the details during a presentation.

A. Overview: Logic Model Framework

A logic model is a plausible and sensible model for how a program is supposed to work.[1] It is a road map—a visual representation of a program or project, and what it is supposed to accomplish. A logic model is a useful tool for linking what a program does to what it hopes to achieve and how to measure that achievement. A logic model can be useful in program planning, program implementation, project management, and program evaluation. It is a highly useful tool in developing and organizing a grant application, and when strategizing any program improvement.

A logic model can be used for program planning; it can also be used for performance monitoring and project refinement. For program planning, the logic model should be developed during the project design phase, beginning first by specifying the ultimate goals desired and the underlying assumptions regarding how this goal can be achieved. It identifies where you are going and how you plan to get there. It is important that project partners collaborate in (see Exhibit 1):

• Defining program goals. What is the overarching goal you seek to achieve? Why are you thinking about intervening?
• Specifying underlying assumptions. What are your underlying assumptions about the nature of the problem, clients’ needs, and what will help? Why does the problem exist? Why do you think it is amenable to intervention? Do clients need the intervention? Want it?
• Identifying key contextual factors so that project partners make explicit and agree upon—before they decide on a program approach—why they are collaborating, what they are trying to achieve and for whom. What is the environment in which your program operates? This can be state and local issues (e.g., funding, leadership) or organizational (e.g., capacity).
• Identifying necessary inputs. What resources are being used (or are needed) to operate the program? For example, these can include funding, staff, time, materials, space.
• Specifying project interventions. What are you doing (or do you plan to do), for whom, with the funding you request? An intervention is a specific cluster of activities targeted to a specific group of people. An intervention is not usually a single activity but rather a multi-pronged approach. Each “prong” should be listed.
• Describing the outputs expected to result from project activities. What will the program produce immediately with respect to participation and service delivery? Each intervention activity has a corresponding output. Outputs have relevant time frames. They are short-term and quantifiable.
• Detailing the immediate and subsequent outcomes—or benefits—expected for program participants. What are you trying to change with the intervention? What are the expected results? How will participants benefit?

A logic model can also be used after a project is developed to assess performance and refine the project. For example:

• Are you doing what you proposed to do? If not, why not? What changes are necessary?
• Are you producing what you said you would produce? If not, why not? What changes are necessary?
• Are you achieving desired results?

Exhibit 1: Logic Model Framework

B. Logic Model Worksheets

The following instructions—and accompanying worksheets—are designed to help you develop a logic model for your project. These worksheets are presented in the order in which you should proceed with developing your logic model.

Worksheet #1: ULTIMATE PROJECT GOALS

The first step in creating a logic model is defining the ultimate project goal. In other words, where are you going with the intervention?

This worksheet will assist project partners in clearly defining what they ultimately hope to achieve with the project. It has three boxes. The first is overall project goals. Why are you even thinking about intervening? Who needs your assistance? What’s the problem you’re trying to address? Project goals are broad, long-term, ultimate outcomes sought for the target population—for example, “economic self-sufficiency,” “improved material well-being of children,” and “increased father involvement in children’s lives.”

As the first two boxes indicate, project goals should align with the legislative goals of the funding authority and with child support and collaborating agency goals. For example, the national CSE strategic plan (which may be found on the OCSE web site - http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cse/) lists the following strategic planning goals for 2005-2009:

1. All children have parentage established.

2. All children in IV-D cases have support orders.

3. All children in IV-D cases have medical coverage.

4. All children in IV-D cases receive financial support from parents as ordered.

5. The IV-D program will be efficient and responsive in its operations.

If all of the expected immediate and intermediate outcomes are achieved, then program goals are likely to be met. Depending on the resources available for a program evaluation, program goals may or may not be translated into measurable outcomes to be assessed in the program evaluation.

Worksheet #2: UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS

The purpose of this worksheet is to make explicit what is often left implicit in program development—namely the beliefs or assumptions upon which the project is built. As the worksheet indicates, there are four areas of assumptions to consider:

• What are assumptions surrounding the problem being addressed? Why does the problem exist? Why do you think it is ameliorable to intervention?
• What are the assumptions about the needs of the clients you expect to serve? Do clients want this intervention? What other resources or avenues for amelioration of the problem do clients have?
• What are the assumptions surrounding the characteristics of the clients expected to participate?
• What assumptions are you making about why the approach will work? Do you have evidence from research or other program evaluations that it should work?

A key purpose in clarifying and making explicit underlying assumptions is to make sure project partners are “on the same page” in terms of why they are collaborating and what they are trying to achieve, for whom. Toward this end, this worksheet allows project partners to document key assumptions and any principles underlying and guiding the development and implementation of the proposed project.

Worksheet #3: CONTEXT

This worksheet describes the major factors in the environment that are likely to affect the project, and to clarify the characteristics and relationships between the organizations most closely involved in the project. Looking back at the overall logic model framework (Exhibit 1), note that arrows from the context box to all other boxes in the logic model illustrate how every aspect of a project is embedded in a larger context. As this worksheet indicates, context is captured by six boxes: (1) characteristics of the environment; (2) site characteristics; (3) agency characteristics; (4) other related interventions; (5) other targeted resources; and (6) other organizational arrangements. Each is described below.

• Characteristics of the Environment. What are the key characteristics of the general environment that you believe might affect the project in some way? These could include changes in agency funding or leadership, local community program expansions or closures, the economy, and population demographics.
• Site Characteristics. What are the characteristics of the site(s) in which interventions will be provided that have implications for the program’s success? If a child support initiative is targeting unmarried parents in local hospitals, for example, you may want to note how many births occur in the hospital each year, how hospital services are staffed, and staff turnover. Other characteristics relevant to a site include accessibility (e.g., on public transportation routes) and other on-site services (e.g., genetic testing). If multiple sites are involved, and if project activities will differ across sites, you may want to use a different worksheet for each site.
• Agency Characteristics. What are the characteristics of the sponsoring organization? These include the type of organization, its size, the services it offers, its service area, and any number of other characteristics that you think are important to understand the role the project will have on, and the resources it will be able to draw upon from, the sponsoring agency. Collaborative arrangements between the agency and other programs (e.g., state or local government programs, community-based organizations) should be noted.
• Other Related Interventions. What are the characteristics of other programs in the environment—whether sponsored by your organization, other organizations, or supported by grants? Do these interventions duplicate or complement the activities proposed by the agency?
• Other Targeted Resources. What are other programs operated by the agency (whether by its own funding or by special grants) that represent joint ventures or collaborative efforts with other agencies?
• Other Organizational Relationships. What are other community programs or organizations from which you could expect to get referrals? What are community organizations to which you could/would refer clients for services not provided by the program/project? Identify the extent to which personal and/or contractual relationships already exist between your agency and these other organizations, or whether informal and/or formal relationships need to be forged.

Worksheet #4: INPUTS TO INTERVENTIONS

This worksheet identifies inputs (e.g., child support staff, hospital social workers, marriage education programs) necessary to provide the intervention. In designing a program, monitoring program performance and refining program design, it is critical to understand which inputs are required for the intervention so that resources can be allocated—or reallocated—as needed. The worksheet includes three boxes.

• Agency Inputs. What are inputs (such as staff and major equipment) available from the agency?
• Inputs from Partners. What are important resources that are contributed to the project by your partners? These inputs can be represented by a financial contribution or formal assignments of staff (includes in-kind contributions). Inputs from partners may include such things as space, equipment, and staff involvement (whether paid or unpaid).
• Interventions. What are your interventions? An “intervention” is defined as a specific set of activities aimed at a specific group of people (e.g., unmarried fathers, unmarried couples) to accomplish specific objectives (e.g., educate the non-custodial parent on the importance of fathers in children’s lives; paternity establishment; inform of child support procedures). An intervention is not usually a single activity, but a multi-pronged approach. For example, an intervention might be “offer paternity establishment in hospitals,” which involves many activities (such as training in-hospital paternity establishment staff, creating paternity establishment informational materials, and talking with unmarried fathers about paternity establishment). Defining the intervention requires that you fully describe what specific activities you will do; with what intensity/frequency/dosage; for whom; and over what period of time.

You should not find yourself with a long list of interventions; if you have such a list, you should see if you can group them based on overlapping objectives. You may want to number the interventions and use the number on subsequent worksheets to minimize repeating the detailed information. It is important to specify a target population for each intervention, and to specify an intervention (and corresponding set of activities) for each target population.

Check to make sure that all inputs necessary to provide each intervention are listed.

Worksheet #5: INTERVENTIONS TO EXPECTED OUTPUTS

What will the interventions produce that will ultimately benefit participants? For example, how many workshops will you hold? How many brochures will you distribute? How many referrals will be made? How many participants will you serve with each intervention activity? Participation and service delivery outputs can include the number of staff trained, the number of workshops held, the number of couples served.

This worksheet has two boxes.

• Interventions. This repeats the information from Worksheet #4. Numbers or other shorthand labels for the interventions described in Worksheet #4 can be used to minimize copying.
• Expected Outputs. What is each intervention expected to produce? Outputs refer both to building capacity for providing services (e.g., number of staff trained, number of interagency informational presentations made) and the actual products of service delivery (e.g., number of clients served, number of brochures distributed, etc.). Outputs are short term—immediately following an intervention (e.g., a marriage education class). Because these numbers are only meaningful in relation to a specific time frame, the relevant time frame should be noted. Expected outputs should be linked directly to each specific intervention. There can be multiple outputs from a single intervention; similarly, more than one intervention could contribute to a single output. Expected outputs reflect estimates only; they will help you and the program staff understand the level of activity expected in relation to specific intervention activities. Expected outputs may change over time, as your program learns about the needs of the target population and interventions are adapted and refined.

If your project includes both a capacity-building intervention and a direct service delivery intervention, you may want to develop separate logic models for each, given that the outputs and outcomes of capacity-building interventions (e.g., number of staff trained) usually translate into antecedent “inputs” required for service delivery interventions.

Note that outputs differ from outcomes. The former is a direct product of the intervention. The latter, as the next worksheet demonstrates, tracks expected results and benefits to the participants.

Check to make sure that each expected output is associated with at least one intervention, and that each intervention has at least one expected output associated with it.

Worksheet #6: EXPECTED OUTPUTS TO EXPECTED OUTCOMES

Whereas outputs are what the program intervention will produce with respect to participation and service delivery, outcomes are actual benefits to the participant. The purpose of this worksheet is to identify the outcomes you expect, for whom, and by when, as a result of the intervention’s outputs. In other words, what will show that you’ve made a difference in your participants’ lives?

There are three boxes on this worksheet. Two boxes are labeled “Expected Outcomes”—one delineates immediate outcomes, and one delineates subsequent (longer-term) outcomes. This is because outcomes occur over time and, oftentimes, an earlier outcome has to have occurred before a subsequent outcome can occur. To reflect this element of time, we’ve divided Expected Outcomes into Immediate and Subsequent. More than one intervention may contribute to a single outcome, and multiple outcomes may result from a single intervention.

This worksheet is extremely important. Your agency has the best chance of achieving its ultimate project goals the more closely aligned the program interventions are with the expected outcomes. Use one Worksheet #6 for each intervention, and list the intervention being addressed at the top, using the name of the intervention or its number consistent with those shown on Worksheets 4 and 5.

Start by transferring expected outputs from Worksheet #5. Then, in each of the boxes labeled Expected Outcomes, indicate the specific outcome expected—for whom, and by when—as a result of implementing the intervention with the target population.

• Expected Immediate Outcomes. What is expected to occur immediately following exposure to the intervention, as a direct result of participation in project activities? For whom will it occur? By when? For example, if the intervention is providing information on paternity establishment (its importance and/or how to establish paternity) in the hospital, then outcomes expected immediately could include an increase in knowledge about the importance of fathers in children’s lives, and an increase in paternity acknowledgments in the hospital. If the intervention is a marriage education class, outcomes you would expect immediately (upon completion of the program) include greater knowledge and skills relating to communication and conflict-resolution, greater marital/relationship satisfaction, more positive attitudes toward marriage, and an intent to apply the knowledge and skills learned. Expected immediate outcomes typically must occur before subsequent outcomes of ultimate interest can occur. For example, if paternity is not established, then a child support order cannot be established for that child (subsequent outcome) and this could compromise the child’s future financial well-being (ultimate project goal). Or, if couples do not gain improved knowledge and skills from a marriage education program, then there may be little hope of witnessing changes in conflict-resolution behavior—or ultimately, in child well-being—as a result of the program.
• Expected Subsequent Outcomes. What intermediate and longer-term outcomes that require either more time to elapse or changes in preceding outcomes before change in these subsequent outcomes can be expected? For example, if an intervention is designed to increase in-hospital paternity establishment, one would expect a subsequent increase in child support orders (an intermediate outcome), which should translate into increased child support payments by the non-custodial father to his child(ren) (another intermediate outcome) and, thus, improved financial well-being of his child(ren) (the ultimate goal). Or if an intervention is designed to improve communication skills (the immediate outcome) of non-married parents, one would expect a subsequent improvement in (reduction of) marital/interparental conflict (an intermediate outcome), which may then lead to greater financial and emotional contributions by the non-custodial father to his child(ren) (another intermediate outcome) and, thus, improved child well-being (the ultimate goal).

The distinction between outcomes expected immediately and outcomes expected subsequently is not always clear, but it does require you to think about the causal sequence of what must happen in order to achieve the ultimate goal. Distinguishing immediate from subsequent outcomes should also lead you to ask, “How long do we think it will take before we would observe a change—in attitudes, knowledge, skills, behaviors, child well-being—as a result of this intervention?” and “How long do we think these changes will last?” Your answers to the “How long before change is observed?” question may have implications for when you should collect data to document program performance and for outcomes evaluation. And your answers to the “How long will it last?” question may have implications for program design and refinement—for example, instituting booster sessions and other follow-up services to sustain positive outcomes for clients.

Check to make sure that each expected immediate outcome is associated with at least one expected output, and that each expected output has at least one expected immediate outcome associated with it.

Check also to make sure that each expected subsequent outcome is associated with at least one immediate outcome, and that each expected immediate outcome has at least one expected subsequent outcome associated with it.

Worksheet #7: MEASURING OUTCOMES

This worksheet will help you think about how to measure the outcomes you have identified. There are three columns.

• Immediate outcomes. In the first column of Worksheet #7, list the immediate outcomes you identified in Worksheet #6.
• Indicators. In the second column, list an indicator (or measure) for each outcome. An ‘Indicator’ is the specific information you will collect or already have available to you to track this outcome. For example, the number of in-hospital paternity affidavits signed is an indicator.
• Evidence of Change. Finally, in the third column, list what you would consider evidence of change on this outcome—or how much change in this outcome (as measured by this indicator) is necessary for you to conclude that your project was a success. Using the example above, the number of signed in-hospital paternity affidavits before and after the intervention is evidence of change. You may have numerical targets, based on experience and your assumptions about how much your intervention will affect this outcome (as reflected by this measure). Or you may be tracking an entirely new outcome, requiring a new and different measure than what has been used in the past; in this case, you may not know what target levels (or amount of change over time) should be expected. Or you may have an experimental “control” group (identical, on average, to your program group, due to random assignment) or a quasi-experimental “comparison” group (identified as “similar enough” to the program group) whose outcomes you are also tracking and can compare to the program group. Note, however, that even if your evaluation design allows you to detect statistically significant differences between the program and control/comparison group and you use this as evidence of change, you should still articulate numerical targets that you would like your program group to attain, in order to speak to the meaningfulness of the program outcome on an absolute level. Therefore, it is especially important to articulate what outcomes and/or changes you consider “a success,” though you should be open to reassessing your outcome targets and/or your measurement strategy as the project proceeds.

Once you design your interventions and specify what you expect to happen, you can think about the challenges you may face and plan accordingly. A logic model can help you monitor program implementation and refine intervention activities as necessary. In this way, it is a “living” document that continues to be useful beyond the project planning stage.

The next set of worksheets is designed to help you think through the practical issues you will face in recruiting clients into program services and in implementing program services, and help you devise a strategy for refining the program as necessary.

Worksheet #8: Barriers to Implementation

The purpose of this worksheet is to identify hurdles you might face and how you will overcome them. That is, what factors impede implementing the project and what are the possible solutions to these barriers? Generally speaking, these include barriers to recruiting target populations into program services, and barriers to delivering program services. Use one Worksheet #8 for each intervention, and list the intervention being addressed at the top of the worksheet, using the name of the intervention or its number consistent with those shown on other worksheets.

There are four boxes on the worksheet. Two focus on barriers, and two focus on possible solutions to the identified barriers.

Potential Barriers are factors that may slow down, or impede, implementation of a particular intervention activity. These may or may not be factors that can be changed by you agency’s efforts. It is important to identify these factors regardless of whether the project can do anything about them. But factors that can be addressed through program modifications and refinement should certainly be identified.

• Barriers to Recruiting Clients and Possible Solutions. What hurdles might you face (or are you facing) in recruiting the target population into services? This includes marketing/advertising, recruitment/outreach, enrollment (registration, intake), and retention/program completion. For example, what helps or hinders the recruitment of males into marriage education programs? What helps or hinders parents’ on-going participation (lack of child care? transportation? too little time in a day?). What factors in the project site and outside environment interfere with or facilitate reaching target populations? After identifying each possible (or, during implementation, each actual) barrier, you should identify a concrete action step (possible solution) for addressing this barrier.
• Barriers to Service Delivery and Possible Solutions. What hurdles might you face (or are you facing) in delivering services to the target population? This includes difficulties securing inputs (e.g., staff, materials, meeting space), unforeseen challenges in working with the target population (e.g., cultural/language barriers) and/or in working with project partners (e.g., lack of support from key management or community leaders). After identifying each possible (or, during implementation, each actual) barrier, you should identify a concrete action step (possible solution) for addressing this barrier.

Information on barriers is descriptive and may be easiest to record in a narrative form, but it needs to be linked to the interventions and each target population. And again, barriers and possible solutions may change as the project evolves. The goal is that—through on-going project monitoring and refinement—barriers are eliminated, strengths are built upon, and the program finds ways to effectively recruit, enroll, retain, and serve clients at the level proposed for the duration of the program.

Worksheet #9: USING INFORMATION ON ACTUAL OUTPUTS TO REFINE INTERVENTION

The purpose of this worksheet is to help you anticipate (during planning) and monitor (during actual implementation) potential problems in program implementation as indicated by information on project outputs. In other words, how will you stay on track?

There are three boxes in this worksheet.

• Expected Outputs. This repeats the information on expected outputs, for each intervention, from Worksheets 5 and 6.
• Actual Outputs. This box allows you to indicate the level of outputs you are currently actually achieving (noting over what period time these outputs have been obtained). Comparing numbers from the actual outputs box to numbers in the expected output box, you can quickly see whether you are achieving what you expected. In fact, you may want to bold or otherwise highlight which outputs fell short of expectations, thus indicating a possible need to refine the intervention (or to adjust expectations/assumptions about when outputs would be achieved or the level of outputs attainable).
• Refinement of Intervention. How will you use information on expected versus actual outputs to identify how you may need to refine your intervention activities? List options for how to refine the program to increase the likelihood that you will achieve expected outputs. In general, this involves strengthening the inputs (e.g., increase staff time) and/or improving the process by which inputs translate into outputs (e.g., hold project team meetings). If your in-hospital paternity establishment intervention is not yielding the number of trained hospital-based paternity establishment staff initially proposed, then you need to ask yourself why—is it how the training is being conducted, or who is doing the training, or which hospital staff are being targeted for the training—and refine the intervention accordingly, perhaps by modifying where, when, how in-hospital staff are trained or how fathers are approached in the hospital.

Worksheet #10: USING INFORMATION ON ACTUAL OUTCOMES TO REFINE INTERVENTION

This worksheet will help you anticipate (during planning) and monitor (during actual implementation) potential problems in program implementation as indicated by information on project outcomes.

There are three boxes.

• Expected Outcomes. This repeats the information on expected outcomes, for each intervention, from Worksheet #6.
• Actual Outcomes. This box allows you to note the level of outcomes you are currently actually achieving (noting over what period time these outcomes have been obtained). Comparing numbers from the actual outcomes box to numbers in the expected outcomes box, you can quickly see whether you are achieving what you expected. Again, you may want to bold or otherwise highlight which outcomes fell short of expectations, indicating a possible need to refine the intervention (or to adjust expectations/assumptions about when outcomes would be achieved or the level of outcomes attainable).
• Refinement of Intervention. This helps you explore how you can use information on expected versus actual outcomes to identify if and how you may need to refine your intervention activities, then list options for how to refine the program to increase the likelihood that you will achieve expected outcomes. This can involve:

  1. Strengthening the intervention activities (e.g., improve paternity establishment informational materials; increase the quality/content/duration of marriage education workshops).

  2. Increasing outputs (e.g., increase the number of fathers participating in the program).

  3. Improving the process by which outputs translate into outcomes.

  4. Improving the process by which immediate outcomes lead to subsequent outcomes (e.g., improve the process by which paternity establishment results in establishment of a child support order and child support payments).

Worksheet #11: BUILDING THE ONE-PAGE LOGIC MODEL

This worksheet requires you to pull together information from the previous, detailed worksheets to come up with a one-page picture—or road map—of your entire project.

As shown below and described earlier, there are eight boxes in your final logic model:

(1) Project goals

(2) Underlying assumptions

(3) Context

(4) Inputs

(5) Interventions and activities

(6) Outputs

(7) Immediate outcomes

(8) Subsequent outcomes

You may find it a challenge to distill key information from earlier worksheets and have it “fit” on this single page. Do your best; it will be worth the effort. It will be enormously helpful to you (to keep the big picture in mind and see how all the pieces fit together), project staff (they can see how their role fits into and is indispensable to the overall project), current and potential partners (who want to know what you plan to do, for whom, with what resources, and what role is expected of them), and potential funders (who need to know that you have a clear program goal and a well thought-out, logically coherent set of activities that are highly likely to result in the achievement of that goal).

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[1] Bickman, L. (Ed.) (1987). Using program theory in evaluation. In New Directions for Program Evaluation, Series: No. 33. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, p. 4.

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