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 WORKING WITH TEACHERS AND FAMILIES DEVELOPMENT PERIODS |
COMPLEMENTARY LEARNING CONNECTIONS
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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.
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.
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.
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.
New & Noteworthy
A list of organizations and initiatives related to the issue's theme of Reflecting on the Past and Future of Evaluation.
Taking a Closer Look: A Guide to Online Resources on Family Involvement
This comprehensive resource guide compiles a wealth of information about family involvement from over 100 national organizations. It contains Web links to recent (published in and after 2000) research, information, and tools.
Making It Work: Low-Income Working Mothers' Involvement in Their Children's Education
Article in the American Educational Research Journal , Vol. 40 , No. 4, December 2003, pp. 879–901.
Using a mixed method analysis, this article looks at the relation between employment and family involvement in children's elementary education for low-income women, and finds that work is both obstacle to and opportunity for family involvement. This article may be downloaded only. It may not be copied or used for any purpose other than scholarship.
Beyond Input: Achieving Authentic Participation in School Reform
M. Elena Lopez and Holly Kreider of HFRP present a framework of authentic parent participation in school reform and its implications for evaluation.
Understanding Family Strengthening to Promote Youth Development
Dr. Geri Lynn Peak, a consultant and formerly the Managing Director of the Center for Applied Research and Technical Assistance, describes the evolution, practice, and potential assessment of a family strengthening approach to promote positive youth development.
Using Behavior Change Theory to Communicate Effectively: The Case of Latino Parent Involvement
Anne Pollock (HGSE) and Julia Coffman and M. Elena Lopez (HFRP) reveal how to design communications that are more effective at changing behavior by keeping in mind the factors that influence behavior.
Using Information Architecture to Improve Communication
Erin Harris from Harvard Family Research Project with Suzanne Muchin, CEO of Civitas, illustrate the design concept “information architecture” for displaying complex information clearly and simply.
Beyond the Head Count: Evaluating Family Involvement in Out-of-School Time
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.
Family Support
The Spring 2002 issue looks at family support evaluations and their role in moving the field forward. This issue features a conversation with Michael Quinn Patton about historical and emerging trends in evaluation practice, descriptions of national and local evaluations that are underway, a discussion of using “effect size” to measure program effectiveness, advice on how to bring family research to legislators' attention, a look at how data can help parents assess schools, and much more.
Lessons From a Partnership Model Project
Kathe Johnson shares her experience from her work with the Women and Poverty Public Education Initiative, outlining four lessons she learned from this project, which connects professional academic and low-income women.
From Health Consumers to Health Consumer Researchers
A grassroots network of families of children with special health care needs shares the lessons they learned about conducting research to improve the health care for their children.
Learning From Families
M. Elena Lopez, from Harvard Family Research Project, discusses expanding the role of family support to include supporting families’ using information to improve their communities.
Evaluating Effect Sizes in the Policy Arena
Kathleen McCartney and Eric Dearing from the Harvard Graduate School of Education provide an overview on effect size and what it reveals about the effectiveness of family support programs.