Description:
The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), awarded a contract to Mathematica Policy Research and its partners to carry out the Study of Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships. ACF's goal for the study is to understand whether these partnerships provide continuity of care; meet families' needs for child care; and improve outcomes for providers, families, and children. As part of the project, we developed a theory of change that includes four sets of constructs: (1) inputs to the partnerships, (2) partnership activities, (3) short- and long-term outcomes, and (4) organizational and contextual factors that influence the partnerships. The purpose of this report is to provide a roadmap for measuring all aspects of the partnerships included in the theory of change. We developed the report with a broad range of stakeholders in mind, including researchers, administrators, and practitioners. The recommended measurement approaches will also inform the evaluation design and data collection plan for the Study of Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships. For each element in the model, we describe the constructs, data elements, data collection methods, and recommended measures, as well as the types of questions that can be answered and how the proposed data collection can inform policy, practice, and research. We conclude with a description of our approach to developing and pre-testing new measures and qualitative data collection protocols. (author abstract)
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