Hispanic Healthy Marriage Initiative Grantee Implementation Study
Supporting Statement for OMB Clearance Request
December 1, 2008
The respondent universe is the 36 HHMI grantees that were considered. The grantees were selected based on a number of criteria. All selected grantees must meet the following criteria:
Grantees are operational; that is, they are actively recruiting participants and providing services; and they are not under an ACF corrective action plan.
Grantees are funded through the duration of the study.
Grantees have a service population that is at least 50% Hispanic or a large percentage at one or more service sites.
Grantees have evaluation capacity; that is, they demonstrate the capacity to provide some output and/or outcome data.
Among grantees eligible for inclusion in the study, the contractor sought variation along key dimensions such as the organization’s experience serving Hispanics, service population, program design, and geography.
The contractor gathered information through an iterative process: review of documents in the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center database, including project status reports; calls with the Federal Project Officers working with grantees; contractor knowledge of grantees from work on other federally funded projects; and, where gaps in information occurred, informal discussions with grantees. Final approval was made by ACF and its federal partners.
No grantees will be required to participate in the study. Because participation is voluntary and at least initial agreement to participate has been obtained, ACF expects all nine grantees to respond positively to the request for site visits and discussions.
Using the instruments for which clearance is being requested, contractor staff will conduct:
On-site interviews with program staff and other stakeholders (discussion guides).
On-site focus groups with program participants (participant focus group guide).
The research contractor will collect information through in-person discussions and focus groups. For the in-person staff and key stakeholder discussions, the contractor will use two-person teams; one person will lead the discussion while the other takes notes. The contractor will also audio-tape the discussions, providing important back-up documentation. The contractor will audio-tape and transcribe the focus groups.
The contractor will begin by contacting the agency director at the nine selected grantees to discuss potential dates and times for a site visit. The contractor will then gather the names and contact information for relevant grantee staff and partners to schedule discussions. The contractor will take notes during the semi-structured, in-person discussions. The contractor will work with grantee staff to identify individuals for focus groups.
No grantee is required to participate. To encourage participation ACF Federal Project Officers sent letters to the identified grantees informing them of their nomination and formally inviting them to participate in the study. The Federal Project Officers also indicated that they were available to answer any questions or address concerns on the part of grantees, as were the Federal Task Order Officers.
Because all of the grantees ultimately identified as primary candidates for the study were open to participating, we do not expect to encounter problems obtaining information from the key respondents within the grantee organizations. Further, with the help of the grantees, we expected to achieve high participation and response rates from other relevant entities and from focus groups.
The staff, key stakeholder and focus group discussion guides were not field tested. The structure of the instruments is similar to those used in other studies conducted by the contractor with similar respondents.
The instruments serve as a guide for conversations between the contractor and grantee staff. Contractor staff will be able to ask clarifying questions to assure individuals are responding appropriately and are correctly interpreting their responses. The response time estimates are based on past experience with similar effort.
Sharon McGroder from The Lewin Group led the development of the evaluation design and development of the data collection instruments. She was assisted by Allison Hyra, Karen Gardiner and Mike Fishman from the Lewin Group; Virginia Knox from MDRC; and Luis Zayas and Luis Torres of the Washington University Center for Latino Family Research. Whitney Engstrom from The Lewin Group was responsible for gathering much of the grantee data from the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center database. She also consulted with the Federal Project Officers regarding the potential grantees.
| File Type | application/msword |
| File Title | head start cares |
| Author | CARA.KUNDRAT |
| Last Modified By | DHHS |
| File Modified | 2008-12-11 |
| File Created | 2008-12-10 |