
Introduction
Healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs and responsible fatherhood (RF) programs offer relationship, parenting, and economic supports with the long-term goal of improving children’s well-being. When studying the effectiveness of these programs, it is important to examine their effects on children. However, measuring child well-being in evaluations of HMRE and RF programs can be challenging.
Purpose
This brief describes how HMRE and RF programs might influence child well-being and provides recommendations for evaluators who want to measure child well-being in their studies. These recommendations are based on a review of how HMRE and RF evaluations measure child well-being. The review is described in more detail in a white paper (Cavadel et al. 2022).
Key Findings and Highlights
Research on child well-being suggests that child well-being has five main domains: (1) cognitive skills, (2) economic circumstances, (3) physical health, (4) psychological health, and (5) social interactions (Huston 2002; Pollard & Lee 2003). HMRE and RF programs can affect these domains through their initial and longer-term outcomes. For example, by supporting communication and other relationship skills, HMRE and RF programs can help participants strengthen their relationships and, in turn, promote their own and their children’s well-being.
Based on our review of recent HMRE and RF evaluations, we provide three recommendations for evaluators interested in measuring child well-being:
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Measure multiple aspects of child well-being. Evaluations of HMRE and RF programs should include measures in more than one child well-being domain to capture a more complete picture of the program’s impacts. Three domains are particularly likely to be influenced by HMRE and RF programs: (1) psychological health, (2) social interactions, and (3) economic circumstances. We describe a few illustrative examples of ways to measure these domains of child well-being.
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Measure parenting and parent well-being to gain a better understanding of how HMRE and RF programs may affect children. An important way HMRE and RF programs may influence child well-being is through their potential effects on parenting and parent well-being. Many of the HMRE and RF evaluations we reviewed included measures of co-parenting, parenting behaviors, or parent well-being, and we describe a few illustrative examples of these measures.
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Consider the cultural validity and relevance of the measures. It is important for evaluators to consider whether the measures they select are appropriate for the people served by the program they are evaluating. While the broad domains of child well-being span cultures, the specific parenting and family practices that support outcomes for children can vary across cultures. As an initial step, evaluators should determine whether the measures have been used with populations similar to those who will be included in the study. If not, it is important to pre-test the measure with similar populations before including it in the evaluation.
Methods
The recommendations in this brief are informed by a review of recent HMRE and RF evaluations. We received 32 HMRE evaluations and 23 RF evaluations conducted since 2000 to determine whether and how they measured child well-being. For more information about the review and the findings, see the full white paper (Cavadel et al. 2022).
Citation
Cavadel, E., Alamillo, J. and Wood, R.G. “Measuring Child Well-Being in Evaluations of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Programs” OPRE Report 2023-017. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2023.