Exploring the Effects of Family Strengthening Programs on Positive Break-Ups of Poor-Quality Relationships in BSF and SHM Data Sets

OPRE funded rigorous evaluation research on the outcomes of the Building Strong Families program (N = 5,102 randomly assigned) and the Supporting Healthy Marriage program (N = 6,298) designed to help lower income unmarried and married couples form and sustain healthy relationships and marriages in order to increase family stability and improve outcomes for children. Overall, initial analyses found no or only small long-term effects (Hsueh et al., 2012; Lundquist et al., 2014; Wood, McConnell, Moore, Clarkwest, & Hsueh, 2012).

But further important questions and analyses regarding the programs’ effects remain to be explored before we will have a full understanding of these interventions and their policy implications. Specifically, in this presentation we will be exploring whether there were experimental effects of the BSF and SHM programs on “positive break-ups” of low-quality relationships. That is, we will test whether some break-ups could be considered positive because they help to end unhealthy relationships sooner and actually improve well-being for children and adults. Previous analyses did not explore whether some break-ups could be positive, treating all break-ups as a negative outcome. (Also, if positive break-ups are removed from analyses, this may increase positive outcomes of the interventions.)

We will identify couple and family relationship characteristics that most strongly predict negative child outcomes, poor parenting, and poor parental mental health to determine whether some break-ups improve child outcomes, parenting, and parental health when families have these risk factors.

We will employ 4-level multilevel models to accurately account for these dependencies of time/wave, individuals, couples, sites). Doing so will provide more precise estimate of effects as well as greater statistical power to detect effects.

References:

Hsueh, J., Alderson, D. P., Lundquist, E., Michalopoulos, C., Gubits, D., Fein, D., & Knox, V. (2012). The Supporting Healthy Marriage evaluation: Early impacts on low-income families. Washington D.C.: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Lundquist, E., Hsueh, J., Lowenstein, A., Faucetta, K., Gubits, D., Michalopoulos, C., & Knox, V. (2014). A family-strengthening program for low-income families: Final impacts from the Supporting Healthy Marriage evaluation. Washington, D.C.: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Wood, R. G., McConnell, S., Moore, Q., Clarkwest, A., & Hsueh, J. (2012). The effects of Building Strong Families: A healthy marriage and relationship skills education program for unmarried parents. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 31, 228-252.