Overview
The purpose of the Supporting Healthy Marriage project is to support the development, implementation and evaluation of research-based interventions designed to increase and sustain healthy marriages among lower-income married couples with children.
The project will evaluate marriage education models in eight locations that are designed to meet the needs of a diverse population of lower-income married couples. The evaluation utilizes a random assignment evaluation design in order to assess the effectiveness of the selected interventions.
The major study questions include: (1) What are the issues and challenges in designing, implementing and operating interventions to build and sustain healthy marriages among low-income couples? (2) What approaches are taken to provide, integrate or add services to promote healthy marriages among the low-income families? What are the characteristics of the interventions and the context within which they are provided? (3) What are the characteristics of couples targeted by interventions? What are the program functions and treatment methods? What are the strategies for outreach and engagement of couples? How do differences in the target populations and their risk factors affect intervention design decisions? (4) What are the net impacts of the interventions on: marital stability and quality of relationships among couples; attitudes and expectations regarding their marriage; parenting attitudes and behaviors among couples; measures of child well-being and development (e.g., cognitive, social, emotional, health), and economic outcomes for families? (5) What are the net impacts for different sub-groups within the research sample? The study will be accomplished though: implementation of eight SHM program demonstrations; provision of technical assistance on program design, implementation and evaluation issues; implementation and assessment of pilot tests; close program performance monitoring and feedback; the conduct of an impact evaluation based on large samples of couples randomly assigned to treatment and control groups; and direct assessments of child wellbeing.
The project period is 9/30/03-9/29/13 and the point of contact is Nancye Campbell. Ask a Question.