Overview
The objectives of the evaluation of the Community Healthy Marriage Initiatives (CHMI) are: (1) to provide implementation evaluations for all of the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) section 1115 waiver healthy marriage demonstrations; and (2) to evaluate the community impacts on marital and family well-being of three OFA-funded large scale, multi-activity community interventions designed to encourage healthy marriages. A unique feature of the community impact study is the focus on evaluating community-level approaches to encourage changes in norms that increase support for healthy marriages.
OCSE Implementation Study: For each implementation study of the OCSE waiver demonstrations, in-depth information on project operations is being gathered through document reviews, administrative data and on-site visits. Implementation evaluations include collection of information related to various child support outcomes.
Community Impact Study: The impact evaluation will use longitudinal data to focus on the changes in marital satisfaction and stability, family well-being, and community outcomes among low-income families in the area where the ACF-funded program is operating. The study will assess impacts of healthy marriage initiatives by comparing changes in outcomes in the CHMI communities with outcomes in comparison communities that are well-matched to the project sites. Residents in the study communities will participate in interviews at several points in time. Interview data will be supplemented by existing administrative data, such as service delivery data maintained by the CHMI program. Implementation studies will also be completed for both program demonstrations and comparison communities.
The project period is 9/30/03-9/29/11 and the point of contact is Alan Yaffe.