Recommendations for Successfully Recruiting and Retaining District Participation in a Teen Pregnancy Prevention Impact Evaluation

Nearly all school districts require research to be approved before conducting a program evaluation in their schools. Individual schools do not have the authority to consent to participate in a program evaluation. Permission must first come from the district; then the researcher can begin recruiting schools. This brief provides guidance on obtaining district approval to participate in an evaluation of a teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) program implemented in a school setting. This guidance is designed both to ensure compliance with district regulations and to inform districts of their role in the evaluation. There is a follow up brief that provides recommendations for recruiting schools available here.

In this brief, we suggest a sequence of steps to gain districts' interest in and ultimately approval for an impact evaluation. The steps include (1) planning, (2) initial contact, (3) preparing a research application, (4) preparing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), and (5) contacting schools (Figure 1). We present steps in a question-and-answer format, with best practices for recruitment highlighted in boxes.