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.
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All Publications & Resources |
Harnessing Technology in Out-of-School Time Settings
This Snapshot reviews the role of technology in OST programs, highlighting the evaluation methods and findings about implementation and youth outcomes.
Health and Sports/Recreation Program Evaluations
The Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP) Out-of-School Time Program Evaluation Bibliography and Out-of-School Time Program Research and Evaluation Database both provide information on evaluations that have been conducted on sports/recreation and health-related out-of-school time (OST) programs, among other categories.
Helping Head Start and Early Head Start Programs Create a Culture That Embraces Data
A new interactive online learning module, Data in Head Start and Early Head Start: Creating a Culture that Embraces Data, developed by the National Center on Program Management and Fiscal Operations, helps Head Start/Early Head Start leaders understand how to use data to inform their decision making.
Home/School/Community: Systems Interventions
The purpose of this course is to provide the student with information on a broad array of issues relating to school and community collaboration with families. Systems interventions within the home, school, and community contexts will be considered. Emphasis is placed on system-level consultation theories, research, and practice. The course prepares school professionals to function as consultants in school and community settings.
How to Develop a Logic Model for Districtwide Family Engagement Strategies
How to Develop a Logic Model for Districtwide Family Engagement Strategies, a tool from Harvard Family Research Project, guides school districts to create a logic model that can aid in planning, implementing, assessing, and communicating about their systemic family engagement efforts.
Indicators: Definition and Use in a Results-Based Accountability System
This brief defines and explores the role of indicators as an integral part of a results-based accountability system. The brief shows how indicators enable decision makers to assess progress toward the achievement of intended outputs, outcomes, goals, and objectives.
Insights From Teaching a Graduate Evaluation and Improvement Science Course
In teaching Learning From Practice: Evaluation and Improvement Science at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Candice Bocala creates ample opportunities for students and partner organizations to work together as they explore the complexities of program evaluation. Discover the three insights Bocala has learned about program evaluation along the way.
Learning for All: The Value of Field Experience in Training a New Generation of Program Evaluators
Field experience in evaluation inquiry is a promising approach to preparing the next generation of evaluators. Learn what one group of student consultants and organizations did to make a field experience in evaluative inquiry a positive one.
Learning From Logic Models in Out-of-School Time
This brief offers an in-depth review of logic models and how to construct them. A logic model can be a powerful tool for illustrating a program's theory of change to program staff, partners, funders, and evaluators. Moreover, a completed logic model provides a point of reference against which progress towards achievement of desired outcomes can be measured on an ongoing basis, both through performance measurement and evaluation.
Learning From Logic Models: An Example of a Family/School Partnership Program
This brief offers a step-by-step approach for developing and using a logic model as a framework for a program or organization’s evaluation. Its purpose is to provide a tool to guide evaluation processes and to facilitate practitioner and evaluator partnerships. The brief is written primarily for program practitioners, but is also relevant and easily applied for evaluators.
Learning from Small-Scale Experimental Evaluations of After School Programs
This Snapshot reviews small-scale experimental evaluations of after school programs, highlighting these studies' evaluation strategies and results.
Learning Organizations
This issue of The Evaluation Exchange, Harvard Family Research Project's quarterly evaluation periodical, investigates what it takes for organizations that serve children and families to become learning organizations. It addresses the questions: What constraints do these organizations face? How do they do it? Who needs to be involved?
Lessons From Family-Strengthening Interventions: Learning From Evidence-Based Practice
Examine how effective family-strengthening interventions can positively impact families and children in this practitioner-friendly brief from Harvard Family Research Project. Lessons From Family-Strengthening Interventions: Learning From Evidence-Based Practice is based on our review of interventions that have been rigorously evaluated through experimental and quasi-experimental studies. We offer educators, service providers, and evaluators recommendations for creating successful programs and evaluations.
Lessons in Evaluating Communications Campaigns: Five Case Studies
This paper examines how communication campaigns with different purposes (individual behavior change and policy change) have been evaluated. It offers a discussion of theories of change that can guide evaluation planning, along with five case studies of completed campaign evaluations. Each case study includes lessons from the evaluation and the paper finishes with a set of cross-case-study lessons gleaned from these evaluations and others.
Leveraging Resources to Promote Positive School-CBO Relationships
This article in the Spring 2004 edition of Afterschool Matters (pp. 15–23) uses information in our Out-of-School Time Program Research and Evaluation Database to examine how community-based organizations and schools can work together to build and leverage resources in creating successful after school programming.
Measurement Tools for Evaluating Out-of-School Time Programs: An Evaluation Resource
This Snapshot describes instruments used by current out-of-school time programs to evaluate their implementation and outcomes.
Methodology
This issue of The Evaluation Exchange, Harvard Family Research Project's quarterly evaluation periodical, investigates evaluation methodologies.
Methodology (#15)
This issue of The Evaluation Exchange includes several articles on methodological topics, particularly those involving complex initiatives or problems. Topics inlcude the logic model approach to evaluate large and diverse foundation initiatives, the difference between cost-benefit analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis, the challenges to evaluation in the coming years, and community action research.
Moving Beyond the Barriers: Attracting and Sustaining Youth Participation in Out-of-School Time Programs
This brief culls information from several implementation and impact evaluations of out-of-school time programs to develop a set of promising strategies to attract and sustain youth participation in the programs.
New Strategies in Foundation Grantmaking for Children and Youth
This report examines trends in foundation grantmaking for children and youth among 19 foundations. The foundations include most of the largest and wealthiest and those whose grantmaking heavily focuses on children and youth. Survey results indicate that, because the problems of youth are interconnected and require comprehensive solutions, foundations are shifting their grantmaking strategies. Several are concentrating more resources on long-term, place-based community strategies designed to improve outcomes for children and youth.
Organizations in Out-of-School Time: An Introduction
The out-of-school time field has grown rapidly over the past decade, with a constant influx of new voices and approaches. This publication is a summary, but far from a complete review, of organizations active in out-of-school time, grouped by topical area.
Out-of-School Time Issue #1
The Fall 2000 issue, the first of a series of two dedicated to the field of out-of-school time and after school, addresses the challenges and possibilities for evaluating after school programs in the new era of accountability. The issue includes an interview with National Institute on Out-of-School Time founder Michelle Seligson, articles relating on-the-ground experiences with evaluation, and our new column, “Ask the Expert.”
Out-of-School Time Issue #2
The Spring 2001 issue is the second in a series of two dedicated to the field of out-of-school time and after school that was started in the Volume VI, Number 1 issue. This issue features a conversation with Jane Quinn about the out-of-school time field, descriptions of national and local evaluations that are under way, a discussion of developmental research and evaluating after school programs, a description of practices that involve youth in evaluation and research, and some practical advice about using logic models in evaluating after school programs.
Overview of Results-Based Accountability: Components of RBA
This brief defines results-based accountability (RBA) as a management tool that can facilitate collaboration among human service agencies, as a method of decentralizing services, and as an innovative regulatory process and explores the components of RBA systems. The brief also shows how RBA can be developed and used at different levels: state, community, agency, or program.
Participation in Youth Programs: Enrollment, Attendance, and Engagement
This is a special issue of New Directions for Youth Development journal edited by Heather B. Weiss, Priscilla M. D. Little, and Suzanne Bouffard, Vol. 2005, No. 105, Spring 2005. This issue unpacks the construct of participation in out-of-school time programming, posing a three-part equation: participation = enrollment + attendance + engagement.