This project identified lessons that the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and its grantees may be able to use in assessing the effects of their community change work. It explored different evaluation methodologies used to measure the impacts, or effectiveness, of a community-level initiative. Although the project did not identify methods that have been specifically designed to evaluate community-level initiatives, it did identify methods that show promise for evaluating these kinds of initiatives. The project also sought to understand the kinds of methodological expertise grantees might need to conduct evaluations of community-change efforts and what data collection methods and strategies are likely to yield useful information. Additionally, it sought to learn from efforts that have attempted to rigorously evaluate community-level initiatives. To learn from these efforts, the project conducted case summaries.
The lessons from this work are captured in a literature review that drew from both from the conceptual, or methodological, literature on how to best measure community-level change as well as from evaluations of specific community-level initiatives. The literature review contains an appendix with an overview of different evaluation methodologies used to measure the impacts of community-level change efforts. It also contains an appendix featuring the case summaries of eight evaluations of community-level initiatives.
The contractor is the Urban Institute.
The point of contact is Kim Clum.