Panel:
Approaching the Evidence Starting Line: Building Infrastructure and Preparing Programs for Rigorous Evaluation
(Family and Child Policy)
Thursday, November 3, 2016: 8:15 AM-9:45 AM
Fairchild West (Washington Hilton)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Panel Organizers: Matthew Stagner, Mathematica Policy Research
Panel Chairs: Sarah Oberlander, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Discussants: Lauren Supplee, Administration for Children and Families
As outlined in Haskins and Margolis (20014) the Obama administration has launched a major effort to build evidence in several social policy fields. One key finding from the early years of this initiative is that field sites trying to implement and rigorous test social policy interventions need a lot of assistance and time to become "evaluation ready." Few programs are in a position to launch into rigorous random assignment evaluations without technical assistance on both evaluation and program implementation.
This panel will explore four programs from the Federal government across three policy areas (teen pregnancy prevention, job assistance, and youth homelessness) and the lessons from helping sites move forward to the point of rigorous evaluation.
Two papers (Farb and Zief) will explore teen pregnancy prevention programs, one of the areas highlighted in the Haskins and Margolis book. Significant progress has been made in building the evidence on these interventions, but it has required careful attention to assisting sites and building the infrastructure for implementation and learning.
The other papers will explore a major ACF career pathways and education initiative, which was enhanced by foundation founding, and an ACF youth homeless initiative which is taking a five year approach to planning and testing elements of intervention models before launching rigorous summative evaluations.
