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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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Creating high-quality early childhood systems necessitates a strong focus on family engagement. Check out how Oregon is adopting an equity lens and building a strong foundation to engage families by leveraging federal funds, community leadership, and philanthropic investments.
K–12 schools are the foundation for children’s learning, and students in schools with positive climates tend to do well academically. Read about and download a new survey tool that families and school reformers can use to measure parents’ perceptions of school climate.
Recognizing the critical role that staff play in promoting quality OST programs, in this brief we examine OST professional development efforts and offer a framework for their evaluation.
This Snapshot examines the range and scope of activities being implemented in current out-of-school time programs to set a context for understanding the links between program activities and positive outcomes for youth.
This Snapshot describes the common data collection methods used by current out-of-school time programs to evaluate their implementation and outcomes.
In addition to summarizing noteworthy articles, research papers, unpublished reports, and books on results-based accountability (RBA), this guide includes a section on RBA sites on the Internet. It includes perspectives from both private and public sectors on how to develop and implement results-based accountability systems, academic literature on RBA theories, and information on how states and localities are developing and implementing RBA systems.
Deborah J. Brown, external evaluator for Save the Children, discusses how continuous improvement processes have helped strengthen one of Save the Children’s language development and pre-literacy programs, Early Steps to School Success.
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.
Read about lessons HFRP has learned from supporting evaluation efforts in the field. This commentary highlights the value of investing time to carefully consider the theory behind a program for evaluation to yield usable and actionable information.
While evaluation needs may vary, all organizations can benefit from utilizing theory-based evaluation tools to frame evaluation efforts. This article explores how three organizations developed their program’s theory of change and logic model.
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.
This brief offers an overview of how out-of-school time programs can evaluate their family involvement strategies and practices. It draws on findings from our OST Evaluation Database, interviews, and email correspondence.
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.
To be successful, children need a strong science, technology, engineering, and math foundation. Learn how Iridescent, a project funded in part by the National Science Foundation, connects families, engineers, and children to develop these skills early on in school.
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.
This report presents what has been happening in the field of public communication campaign evaluation in recent years. It examines evaluation challenges, criticisms, and practice and includes sections on relevant theory, outcomes, and useful methods for designing evaluations. It ends with opportunities for the road ahead.
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.
This brief summarizes Harvard Family Research Project's evaluation findings about the Preschool for California's Children grantmaking program at its 5-year midpoint.
A User's Guide to Advocacy Evaluation Planning was developed for advocates, evaluators, and funders who want guidance on how to evaluate advocacy and policy change efforts. This tool takes users through four basic steps that generate the core elements of an advocacy evaluation plan, including what will be measured and how.
This brief offers lessons and best practices from foundations across the country on grantmaking to school districts. It offers advice to foundations that are considering school district investments for the first time. It also offers a useful "check" to more experienced foundations that want to examine their thinking and approaches against the lessons and practices of other foundations.
This presentation examines the “essential data” that OST providers and intermediaries should consider collecting for an evaluation, and the important role families can play throughout the process.
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.
Book chapter on using mixed methodology in the social sciences. In B. Somekh & C. Lewin (Eds.), Research methods in the social sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Afterschool Evaluation 101 is a how-to guide for conducting an evaluation. It is designed to help out-of-school time (OST) program directors who have little or no evaluation experience develop an evaluation strategy. The guide will walk you through the early planning stages, help you select the evaluation design and data collection methods that are best suited to your program, and help you analyze the data and present the results.
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.