Predicting Participation in Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Programs
OPRE Report 2023-125
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Associated Project
Strengthening the Implementation of Marriage and Relationship Programs
Prepared for:
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation
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Key Findings
Overall, the results from this special topic report highlight the importance of context when determining how to best structure a workshop series. The special topic report found that there are numerous ways that participant and workshop characteristics interact to predict the likelihood that a participant will complete a workshop series. Across grantees, the model predicted that workshops with fewer, longer sessions would have higher completion rates for grantees’ typical participants. While the performance and predictive power of the models indicate that they can be useful to HMRF practitioners and staff involved in program design and improvement, these types of models can be difficult to interpret. To help illustrate these findings, we created a range of visual scenarios (which are presented in Appendix A). Each scenario highlighted the set of optimal workshop characteristics that predict the highest probability of the typical participant completing the workshop, as well as the set of suboptimal workshop characteristics that predict the lowest probability of the typical participant completing the workshop.
This research-to-practice brief describes findings from the special topic report about what workshop- and participant-level factors might predict greater participation in HMRF primary workshops. Appendix A of the brief presents scenarios illustrating predictors of workshop completion; Appendix B is a technical appendix. Mathematica also shared findings from the special topic report in a webinar with grantees. These products share information with HMRF practitioners, local evaluators, and others about the predictive methods used, key findings, potential uses of the results, and next steps, including considerations for ensuring that results are used equitably to help all HMRF program participants.
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