This brief provides a general overview of the two Healthy Marriage (HM) grantees involved in the Parents and Children Together Evaluation (PACT), provides participation rates in services, and documents how the two grantees integrated job and career advancement services for parenting couples into their programs. This brief uses data obtained through staff interviews and program observations during site visits; ongoing interactions with program leadership; and data from a management information system that programs use to record data on couples’ receipt of services. (author abstract)

This report from the Urban Institute provides early implementation findings from a study of six grantees that provide soon-to-be and recently-released fathers and their families with an array of activities and services in responsible fatherhood/parenting, healthy marriage/relationships, and economic stability. The goals of the programs are to help stabilize the fathers and their families, move the fathers toward self-sufficiency, and reduce recidivism. These OFA grantees began program operations in October 2011; this report covers program activity through May 2013. (author abstract)

This report is a technical supplement to The Community Healthy Marriage Initiative Evaluation: Impacts of a Community Approach to Strengthening Families. It provides additional detail about the research design and analytic methods that were used in the impact analyses and additional supplemental analyses that explore other aspects of the demonstration. (author abstract)

This report describes the implementation and impacts of selected programs funded through grants awarded to a number of organizations to conduct large-scale, community-wide projects that used “various methods to support healthy marriages community-wide” (Community Healthy Marriage [CHM] Grants to Implement Multiple Allowable Activities: Level 3; Healthy Marriage Demonstration Grants. Funding Opportunity Announcement 2006). The projects were to implement simultaneously five or more of the eight allowable activities specified in the authorizing legislation, reach a broad audience, involve stakeholders from diverse community sectors (e.g., government, schools, faith-based organizations, businesses, health care providers), and offer voluntary, healthy marriage and relationship education services to reach as many interested participants as possible. Impacts, at the community level, on a range of family-life outcomes were measured utilizing a representative sample of adults in matched treatment and comparison communities. (author abstract)

This report is a technical supplement to the 36-month impact report for the Building Strong Families (BSF) evaluation (Wood et al. 2012). It provides additional detail about the research design, analytic methods, and variable construction that were used for the 36-month analysis, as well as a discussion of the subgroup analysis that was conducted. Additionally, the report discusses the treatment-on-the-treated (TOT) impact analysis, an analysis of BSF’s effects on couples who actually attended BSF group sessions. The full set of impact results generated as part of the 36-month analysis is included in the appendices of this volume. Restricted use data files and documentation are available through the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research. (author abstract)

The Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) evaluation was launched in 2003 to test the effectiveness of a skills-based relationship education program designed to help low-and modest-income married couples strengthen their relationships and to support more stable and more nurturing home environments and more positive outcomes for parents and their children. The evaluation was led by MDRC with Abt Associates and other partners, and it was sponsored by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation in the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This paper presents the results of an exploratory analysis that examines whether SHM program impacts vary by six subgroup-defining characteristics.

SHM was a voluntary, yearlong, marriage education program for lower-income, married couples who had children or were expecting a child. The program provided group workshops based on structured curricula; supplemental activities to build on workshop themes; and family support services to address participation barriers, connect families with other services, and reinforce curricular themes. The study’s random assignment design compared outcomes for families who were offered SHM’s services with outcomes for a similar group of families who were not offered SHM’s services but could access other services in the community.

The study’s main impact reports limited subgroup analysis to three potential moderators of impacts 12 months and 30 months after couples entered the study: couples’ level of marital distress, family income-­to-poverty level, and race/ethnicity. This paper explores whether the impacts of the SHM program on marital quality and stability outcomes differ according to six additional subgroup-defining characteris­tics at the 12-and 30-month follow-up points: (1) length of marriage at study entry, (2) experience of abuse or neglect in the family of origin, (3) psychological distress at study entry, (4) whether the extended family respects and values the couple’s marriage, (5) presence of a stepchild in the household, and (6) presence of a young child (under 3) in the household. (author abstract)