The Supporting Healthy Marriage Evaluation

Summary

The Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) evaluation was launched in 2003 to test the effectiveness of a skills-based relationship education program designed to help low- and modest-income married couples strengthen their relationships and to support more stable and more nurturing home environments and more positive outcomes for parents and their children. The evaluation was led by MDRC with Abt Associates and other partners, and it was sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families, in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

SHM was a voluntary, year long, marriage education program for lower-income, married couples who had children or were expecting a child. The program provided group workshops based on structured curricula; supplemental activities to build on workshop themes; and family support services to address participation barriers, connect families with other services, and reinforce curricular themes. The study's random assignment design compared outcomes for families who were offered SHM's services with outcomes for a similar group of families who were not but could access other services in the community.

Conditions

• Marital Relationships
• Family Relations
• Low-Income Population
• Child Behavior
• Adolescent Behavior

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

A Family-Strengthening Program for Low-Income Families

The program's central and most intensive component was a series of relationship and marriage education workshops for groups of couples that was offered in the first four to five months of enrollment in the program. Complementing the workshops was a second component, offered for the year after enrollment, that consisted of supplemental activities: educational and social events that were intended to build on and reinforce lessons from the curricula. The third component, family support services, paired couples with a specialized staff member who maintained contact with them and facilitated their participation in the other two components throughout the duration of the program.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Abt Associates

  collaborator INDUSTRY

• Child Trends

  collaborator OTHER

• Optimal Solutions Group

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Public Strategies

  collaborator OTHER

• MDRC

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• JoAnn Hsueh, PhD · MDRC

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2007-02-28

Primary Completion

2012-07-31

Completion

2012-07-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations