Implementing a Large-Scale Evaluation of Marriage and Relationships Skills Education: Progress of the Building Strong Families Project

M. Robin Dion is a Senior Research Psychologist at Mathematica Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Currently she is principal investigator for the Building Strong Families project, a large-scale demonstration and rigorous nine-year evaluation of multiple programs to support healthy couple relationships among unwed parents with young children.

Alan Hershey is a Senior Fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, and serves as its coordinator of studies relating to family formation and welfare. He is currently the director of Mathematica's Building Strong Families project for the Administration for Children and Families.

The Building Strong Families (BSF) project is the nation's largest and most rigorous evaluation of interventions to improve relationships among low-income unmarried couples with children. The project was motivated by earlier research findings that at the time of their child's birth, most unmarried couples report having loving relationships and aspirations to marry, but that many soon break up. The BSF intervention includes guided group sessions addressing common couple issues, as well as one-on-one support and referrals to other needed services. More than 5,000 unmarried couples have voluntarily enrolled in the BSF study at sites in seven states and been randomly assigned to a program or control group. The conference presentation will describe the intervention, including the relationship skills curricula on which it is based, as well as the progress of the evaluation, addressing such questions as who participates, the extent of their involvement in program services, and couples' responses to the intervention. It will also explain how BSF was implemented, including how host sites were found and the processes used to identify and recruit couples. The evaluation will assess the impact of the intervention on relationship quality and status, family well-being, and children's social, emotional and cognitive development; a preview will be given of analysis plans as the evaluation proceeds with its follow-up of families 15 months and 36 months after they enter the evaluation sample.