Introduction
The Fatherhood and Marriage Local Evaluation (FaMLE) and Cross-Site Project is seeking public input on potential improvements to nFORM, the Management Information System used by the current cohort of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) grantees.
Since 2006, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA), has had administrative responsibility for federal funding of Healthy Marriage (HM) and Responsible Fatherhood (RF) Grant Programs. RF grantees provide a comprehensive set of services to fathers designed to promote economic stability, foster responsible parenting, and promote healthy marriage and relationships. HM grantees offer a broad array of healthy marriage and relationship education services. The FaMLE Cross-Site Project led by ACF’s Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) with funds from OFA, supports the third cohort of HMRF grant programs (funded from 2015 through 2020) by fostering high quality data collection, strengthening grantee-led local evaluations, and conducting cross-site performance measures analysis.
OFA and OPRE are engaged in a learning agenda to increase understanding of HMRF programs. ACF incorporates multiple opportunities and options for learning throughout a program's implementation. One example is the collection of program performance data from HMRF grantees, which provides critical information to decision makers and leaders—both those on the ground and those in management—to inform program design, operation, and oversight.
A performance measures data collection system called nFORM (Information, Family Outcomes, Reporting, and Management; OMB Control No.: 0970-0460), was implemented with the current HMRF grantees to improve the efficiency of data collection and reporting and the quality of data. This system allows for streamlined and standardized submission of grantee performance data and creation of regular reports which summarize grantees’ progress on select performance measures during the fiscal year.
Purpose
To advance ACF’s learning agenda, OPRE is seeking public input on potential refinements and improvements to the existing performance measures. The existing performance measures were developed in 2014 based on an extensive review of the research literature and grantees’ past measures, and were modified after public comment. OPRE seeks comment on the following performance measure and reporting instruments:
- Applicant characteristics
- Program operations (including program characteristics and service delivery)
- Participant outcomes:
- Entrance survey (four versions): (1) HM Program Entrance Survey for Adult-Focused Programs; (2) HM Program Entrance Survey for Youth-Focused Programs; (3) RF Program Entrance Survey for Community-Based Fathers; and (4) RF Program Entrance Survey for Incarcerated Fathers
- Exit survey (four versions): (1) HM Program Exit Survey for Adult-Focused Programs; (2) HM Program Exit Survey for Youth-Focused Programs; (3) RF Program Exit Survey for Community-Based Fathers; and (4) RF Program Exit Survey for Incarcerated Fathers
- Quarterly Performance Report
- Semi-annual Performance Progress Report
OPRE welcomes input on the following aspects of the current performance measures, constructs, and reporting instruments used in the nFORM system:
- the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected, including:
- relevance and appropriateness of the measures for the target populations served by the programs,
- how well the measures reflect programs’ goals and theories of change and
- whether the quarterly reports capture key aspects of program performance and progress.
- ways to minimize the volume or burden of performance data that are requested from HMRF grantees through these instruments.
We invite you to submit your comments to nformfeedback@acf.hhs.gov by Friday, December 13, 2019. The current measures and instruments on which public input is sought can be found on the nFORM Help Page , in the Quick Reference (see, “Sample reports for reference”), and Surveys sections.