Introduction
As Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agencies, you need evidence to help inform the policy and program choices you make. One way you can build evidence to inform the choices you make is to partner with researchers. Researchers can provide the capacity and knowledge to help your agency collect high-quality evidence to answer your key questions.
This brief was created by the Child Care Research and Evaluation Capacity Building Center , with support from the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation in the Administration for Children and Families.
Purpose
This brief aims to introduce CCDF Lead Agency staff to researcher-agency partnerships. Researcher-agency partnerships are long-term, collaborative relationships between researchers and government agencies, such as CCDF Lead Agencies. This brief describes what agencies said about how starting and continuing researcher-agency partnerships improves their work. It details problems agencies faced when starting and continuing partnerships. Finally, it provides approaches and tools agencies can use to prevent, prepare for, and address these issues.
Key Findings and Highlights
Researchers and agency staff expressed that there are many benefits for agencies involved in researcher-agency partnerships. By taking part, the agency can
build more complex evidence on policies and practices;
use administrative data;
improve how the public, policymakers, and funders value and use their evidence;
continue work even with high turnover; and
build and strengthen relationships with other government agencies.
Our talks with partners revealed that they felt the benefits outweigh the issues in researcher-agency partnerships. Approaches and tools, such as drafting an agency engagement plan, can set a new partnership up for success. Continuing partnerships may benefit from regular communication and updating the shared-goals agreement and learning agenda.
Methods
We gathered information for this brief from three sources: (1) discussions from community of practice meetings with OPRE-funded Child Care Policy Research Partnership (CCPRP) 2019 and Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Implementation Research and Evaluation Grant team members; (2) interview responses by researchers, CCDF Lead Agency staff, and community-based organizations involved in researcher-agency partnerships, and (3) existing literature.
Citation
Berger, Rebecca H., Clare Waterman, Mattie Mackenzie-Liu, Peter Willenborg, and Isaac Bledsoe. (2024). “How to Build and Strengthen Partnerships between CCDF Lead Agencies and Early Care and Education Researchers: Supporting Evidence to Inform Policy.” OPRE Report #2024-186. Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation.