The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
All Publications & Resources
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After School Evaluation Symposium
This 2-day meeting brought together the perspectives of diverse stakeholders to inspire new ideas and foster stronger links between research, practice, and policy. Participants discussed issues of access, quality, professional development, the role of evaluation research, and systems-building efforts.
A Conversation With Richard Rothstein
Richard Rothstein argues that narrowing the achievement gap requires substantial changes in social policy in addition to extensive school reform.
Research and Evaluation of Family Involvement in Education: What Lies Ahead? (Panel Session)
This panel session at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association in Montreal, examined the current knowledge base and future directions for family involvement research and evaluation. Heather Weiss identified priority areas for future research and evaluation and criteria for selecting these areas. Panelists Kathleen Hoover-Dempsey, William Jeynes, Joyce Epstein, and Anne Henderson discussed research and evaluation on parent–child and parent–student–school relationships, home–school communication and parental expectations, school-based partnership programs, and community organizing, respectively.
Perspectives on Family Involvement
Nancy Hill, Amy Baker, and Kevin Marjoribanks discuss the present state and future direction of family involvement research and evaluation, from the perspectives of developmental psychology, evaluation, and education, respectively.
From the Director's Desk
An introduction to the issue on Evaluating Family Involvement Programs by HFRP's Founder & Director, Heather B. Weiss, Ed.D.
Co-Constructing Family Involvement
M. Elena Lopez, Holly Kreider, and Margaret Caspe from HFRP discuss the co-construction of home-school partnerships to support children’s learning and development.
Assessing the Effects of Parent Involvement Interventions on Elementary School Student Achievement
Herbert Turner, Chad Nye, and Jamie Schwartz explain the Campbell Collaboration’s application of its systematic review process to parent involvement interventions.
Improving Parental Involvement: Evaluating Treatment Effects in the Fast Track Program
Robert Nix, research associate at Pennsylvania State University, describes how a rigorous evaluation of a complex behavior problems preventive intervention analyzes its school-home component.
Blending Evaluation Traditions: The Talent Development Model
Veronica Thomas and Velma LaPoint describe the Talent Development approach to evaluating an urban family-school-community partnership program.
A Catalog of Family Process Measures
Margaret Caspe from HFRP describes the various measures family intervention and prevention programs use to evaluate family processes.
Using Concept Mapping to Develop Family Support Program Theory
Scott Rosas, from the Nemours Foundation, discusses the potential of concept mapping for the design and implementation of family support evaluations.
Basic Applications of Multilevel Modeling
Eric Dearing, from the University of Wyoming, explains some of the basic uses of multilevel modeling, using examples from family involvement research and evaluation.
Evaluating Family Involvement Programs
This issue of The Evaluation Exchange brings together the current knowledge base of programs in family support and family involvement, providing a continuous perspective on family processes with regard to children's learning and development, from a child's early years through adolescence. Articles address the challenges of evaluating family programs, such as the need for conceptual clarity, methodological rigor, accountability, and contextual responsiveness. Rounding out the issue are examples of ongoing evaluations of parent leadership and organizing to ensure that schools serve all children at high standards.
What Matters in Family Support Evaluation?
M. Elena Lopez of HFRP interprets themes from a participatory evaluation and parent engagement institute.
Learning From Parents Through Reflective Evaluation Practice
David Scheie, See Moua, and Pang Lee summarize lessons learned by listening to parents’ spontaneous stories during a parent survey interview.
Ongoing Evaluations of Programs in Parent Leadership and Family Involvement
Kelly Faughnan and Cassandra Wolos of HFRP present two listings of upcoming program evaluations, the first in parent leadership and organizing, the second in family involvement in education.
Promoting Quality Outcome Measurement: A Home-Visitation Case
Audrey Laszewski, project director of the Early Years Home Visitation Outcomes Project of Wisconsin, describes how a stakeholder collaboration resulted in a common outcome measurement process.
A Conversation With Jeanne Brooks-Gunn
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn reflects on the breakthrough findings and new directions for research, evaluation, and practice in family-focused interventions.
Family, School, and Community Connections Symposium: New Directions for Research, Practice, and Evaluation
We teamed up with the National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools at the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) to present this 1-day Family, School, and Community Connections Symposium: New Directions for Research, Practice, and Evaluation.
Understanding and Evaluating Family Engagement in Out-of-School Time (Workshop)
Engaging with families is one of the many strategies that out-of-school time (OST) programs use to create quality, adult-supervised experiences for youth during nonschool hours. This workshop introduced participants to the latest research and evaluation findings on family involvement in OST programs, and shared strategies for engaging with families, using two case studies to illustrate these practices in context.
Evaluating Family Support: Thinking Critically, Thinking Internationally (Keynote Address)
Evaluation plays a major role in shaping new directions for the field of family support. In her keynote address at the Participatory Evaluation and Parent Engagement Institute, sponsored by Family Support America and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, in Kansas City, Missouri, September 20–22, 2004, Heather Weiss, Founder and Director of HFRP, described how evaluation can support learning, continuous improvement, and innovation. The four components of a family support evaluation strategy that she outlined were experimental studies to show program impact on families, utilization-focused evaluation to support policy and practitioner decision making, action research and empowerment evaluation, and performance standards based on solid research and evaluation.
Working It Out: The Chronicle of a Mixed-Method Analysis
Chapter in Discovering Successful Pathways in Children's Development: Mixed Methods in the Study of Childhood and Family Life. Edited by Thomas S. Weisner. Published by University of Chicago Press. This chapter chronicles a mixed-method analysis of family involvement in children's learning, drawing observations about the process and added value of combining methods.
Rethinking the Evaluation of Family Strengthening Strategies: Beyond Traditional Program Evaluation Models
Charles Bruner of the Child and Family Policy Center outlines three factors of good family strengthening programs that evaluators are not adequately measuring in their evaluations.
Early Head Start: Further Lessons
Catherine Ayoub and Barbara Pan, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, describe their work collecting and analyzing longitudinal data to supplement national findings from the Early Head Start study.
Engaging With Families in Out-of-School Time Learning
This Snapshot provides an overview of how researchers are evaluating out-of-school time programs’ engagement with families.