Measuring Child Well-Being in Evaluations of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Programs (Research Brief)

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 stem from a literature review of how HMRE and RF evaluations measure child well-being, which is described in more detail in a white paper (Cavadel et al. 2022). Based on this review, we provide three recommendation for evaluators interested in measuring child well-being: (1) Measure multiple aspects of child well-being; (2) Measure parenting and parent well-being to gain a better understanding of how HMRE and RF programs may affect children; and (3) Consider the cultural validity and relevance of the measures.