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.
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.
Free. Available online only.
Public Communication Campaign Evaluation: An Environmental Scan of Challenges, Criticisms, Practice, and Opportunities
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.
Free. Available online only.
Internet Surveys: Back to the Future
Internationally recognized survey expert Don Dillman discusses the advantages and limitations of conducting surveys via the Internet.
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.
Free. Available online only.
Evaluating Seattle's Family Centers
Julia Coffman at Harvard Family Research Project describes the Seattle's Five-Tiered Approach to evaluating its family centers.
Broadening the Perspective on Scale
Julia Coffman of HFRP and the Center for Evaluation Innovation describes four approaches to scale that differ on both what is scaled and how it is scaled.
Logic Models in Out-of-School Time
Julia Coffman of HFRP describes one approach OST programs can take to develop a logic model.
A Conversation With Paul Light
Paul Light is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., an instructor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and author of 14 books, including most recently Pathways to Nonprofit Excellence. Previously he was Director of the Public Policy Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Michael Scriven on the Differences Between Evaluation and Social Science Research
Michael Scriven, author of Evaluation Thesaurus, talks about how evaluation has evolved into a discipline distinct from social science research.
A Conversation With Jonny Morell
Jonny Morell of the Altarum Institute discusses, among other things, the relationship between innovation and efficiency in technology application.
Grantmaking to School Districts: Lessons for Foundations
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.
Free. Available online only.
A Conversation With Ricardo Millett
Ricardo Millett from the Woods Fund of Chicago discusses how evaluators can build capacity by addressing issues of diversity and multiculturalism.
A User's Guide to Advocacy Evaluation Planning
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.
Free. Available online only.
Learning by Listening: A Longitudinal Study of Family Literacy
This study explores the reading concepts held by urban families and how home reading practices intersect with school literacy practices.
Free. Available online only.
Beyond Basic Training
Betty Cooke of the Minnesota Department of Children, Families, and Learning describes Minnesota’s experiences using program staff as data collectors. Stan Schneider and Berle Mirand Driscoll from Metis Associates writes about using students as ethnographers in a study of a family resource center. Cheryl Fish-Parcham of Families USA and Theresa Shivers of United Planning Organization/Head Start write about using client families in a study of managed health care.
Bridging Multiple Worlds: Building Pathways From Childhood to College
Students' pathways through school can be seen as moving through an academic pipeline to adulthood. The Bridging Multiple Worlds model focuses on how diverse youth, beginning in their middle childhood years, navigate across their worlds of families, peers, schools, and communities as they move along their pathways to college, careers, and family roles in adulthood.
Free. Available online only.
Participatory Evaluation: Enhancing Evaluation Use and Organizational Learning Capacity
Ten Strategies for Enhancing Multicultural Competency in Evaluation
Teresa Boyd Cowles of the Connecticut Department of Education offers self-reflective strategies evaluators can use to enhance their multicultural competency.
“For the first time I understand what it takes for my own child to graduate”: Engaging Immigrant Families around Data
D’Lisa Crain, Grant Administrator for the Nevada State Parent Information & Resource Center and Parent Involvement Coordinator for the Washoe County School District, talks about using case studies to help immigrant families better understand data as well as training parents to use an online data tool to track student learning and attendance.
British Bangladeshi and Pakistani Families and Education Involvement: Barriers and Possibilities
This study explores the experiences of British Bangladeshi and Pakistani parents in their interactions with schools and their involvement in children’s education.
Free. Available online only.
Balancing Priorities in the Evaluation of Educational Technology
Education reform policies place new emphasis on educational technology. Katherine McMillan Culp and Margaret Honey from the Center for Children and Technology have learned the importance of research rigor and local validity in their evaluations of educational technology.
Avoiding Unwarranted Death by Evaluation
Lois-ellin Datta of Datta Analysis points to the importance of studying control and comparison group experiences when conducting experimental studies.
Credentialing Caregivers
This paper describes why family support is essential, given current social and economic trends, and stresses the need to bridge child care and family support. The author underscores the need for accessible family support training curricula that can be adapted to audiences of child care providers.
$7.00 . 25 Pages.
Family Involvement in School and Low-Income Children's Literacy Performance
This groundbreaking study demonstrates that when families' involvement in school increases over the elementary years, children's achievement increases. Furthermore, the authors show that family involvement in school matters most for children whose mothers have less education.
Free. Available online only.
The Promotive Effects of Family Educational Involvement for Low-Income Children
Article in the Journal of School Psychology, 42(6), 445–460. In this article the authors longitudinally examined associations between family involvement, children's feelings about literacy, and children's literacy achievement from kindergarten through fifth grade. Children's feelings about literacy mediated associations between family educational involvement and literacy achievement. Also, family involvement was more positively associated with literacy outcomes for children whose mothers were less educated compared with children whose mothers were more educated.