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Find and share professional documents—from curriculum to articles to presentations. Our Professional Resource Library is a great way for NCFR members and active Certified Family Life Educators to pool knowledge on a wide variety of family topics. Please refer to Terms of Use for guidelines on submitting to the NCFR website.
 

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The Future of Children

The mission of The Future of Children is to translate the best social science research about children and youth into information that is useful to policymakers, practitioners, grant-makers, advocates, the media, and students of public policy.

The RAND Corporation

The RAND Corporation is a non-profit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND research on children covers the prenatal period up to age 18 and includes areas such as child health and the role of the family unit, neighborhoods, and communities in influencing child well-being. RAND's family-focused research covers additional topics such as marriage and divorce, senior care, and family finances.

Michael P. Johnson
from Family Focus on Child Abuse and Neglect

Domestic Violence and Child Abuse: What Is the Connection—Do We Know?

By Michael P. Johnson, Ph.D., Associate Professor Emeritus, Penn State University

One of NCFR's leading scholars on domestic violence examines the link between Intimate Partner Violence and child abuse.

for Members ONLY

Research Methods Update: The Interdependence of Family Members: Approaches in Multilevel Modeling - Audio Recording

JuliAnna Smith, Ph.D.; Aline Sayer, Ph.D. and Jade Logan, Ph.D.

JuliAnna Smith, Aline Sayer and Jade Logan are all researchers and faculty members at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

One of the most fascinating aspects of studying families is attempting to understand the impact of the strong interdependence between family members on well-being, relationship quality and other outcomes of interest. Unfortunately, many commonly used statistical methods such as analysis of variance (ANOVA) and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression assume that the outcomes being examined are statistically independent of each other. As a result, hypothesis tests based on these approaches will be inaccurate when examining outcomes for individuals who are nested within families. This workshop will provide several statistical models useful for the analysis of dyadic data including the longitudinal multivariate outcomes model for distinguishable dyads. The presenters will walk the participants through the steps required to properly structure data and then to fit these models to data using the HLM6 software package.

Introduction of Speaker: Sylvia Niehuis

for Members ONLY

Focus on Poverty Research: The National Poverty Centers - Audio Recording

Presenters: Tom Kaplan, Ph.D., representing the Institute for Poverty Research at University of Wisconsin; Deborah Tootle, Ph.D., representing the Southern Rural Development Center at Mississippi State University; Jocelyn B. Richgels, Ph.D., representing the Rural Policy Research Institute, administered jointly by Iowa State University, University of Missouri and University of Nebraska; Rich Huddleston, Ph.D., Executive Director, ARK Advocates for Children and Families.

The purpose of this session is to further the knowledge of federally supported Poverty Centers and the resources available to scholars through the Centers, by listening to and interacting with a panel of leader-representatives from each of the Centers.

Chair: Pamela A. Monroe

Evidence-Based Policymaking. Insights from Policy-Minded Researchers and Research-Minded Policymakers

This book is for those who believe that good government should be based on hard evidence, and that research and policy ought to go hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, no such bond exists. Rather, there is a substantial gap, some say chasm, between the production of knowledge and its utilization. Despite much contrary evidence, the authors propose there is a way of doing public policy in a more reflective manner, and that a hunger for evidence and objectivity does exist.

for Members ONLY

Cohabitation Plenary Session - Video Recording

Two leading scholars will offer a plenary on cohabitation. Dr. Scott Stanley, Research Professor, Department of Psychology, and Co-Director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver, will discuss risk and findings from an ongoing longitudinal study in his presentation. Dr. Pamela Smock, Professor of Sociology and Research Professor in the Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, will cite recent evidence from social science research and examine the meanings of cohabitation in the United States as they vary by social class, gender, and race/ethnicity.

from 2009 NCFR Conference Recordings

The Marriage-Go-Round: Partnership Turnover in the U.S. and Other Western Countries - Video Recording

Andrew J. Cherlin, Ph.D., Griswold Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University

Americans today marry more repeatedly and have more live-in partners than people in any other Western country. American children, more than any others, must cope with the frequent and often disruptive comings and goings of parents and parents’ partners. Dr. Cherlin will compare U.S. data with that from other countries; discuss the roots of this distinctive pattern; review the strength and limitations of the evidence of the effects on children; and discuss the implications for family policy.

for Members ONLY

Is Child Well-being in the U.S. Improving or Declining? - Video Recording

Paul Amato is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Demography, the Pennsylvania State University. He is also a past Program Chair and Section Chair of NCFR and winner of the 2008 Burgess Award and Reuben Hill Award.

Observers disagree over whether children's well-being is improving or declining in the United States. Broad statements about children's well-being are problematic, however, because well-being is a multidimensional construct, and not all indicators have changed in the same direction. This presentation reviews evidence on various aspects of children's well-being (such as health, academic achievement, and poverty) and describes structural and policy factors that are linked with shifts in these outcomes.

Introduction of Speaker: David Demo

Session Presider: Anisa Zvonkovic, 2008 Program Chair

for Members ONLY

Special Update for Researchers and Practitioners- Audio Recording

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.