Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS), 5 U.S. states, 2016-2021

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<p>The federal government has made a long-standing commitment to supporting healthy relationships and stable families. In the mid-1990s, Congress created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families...

<p>The federal government has made a long-standing commitment to supporting healthy relationships and stable families. In the mid-1990s, Congress created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, which provided states with the funding and flexibility to support activities that promoted healthy marriages. Beginning in the mid-2000s, the federal government provided additional funding specifically to support healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE). The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services oversees these funds and distributes them through a set of competitive multiyear grants to organizations nationwide.</p> <p>The Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation was a five-site, random assignment evaluation of HMRE programs, and was overseen by ACF's Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) with funding from OFA. The five sites were selected from among a cohort of 46 organizations awarded multiyear grants from OFA in September 2015. The sites were selected for their potential to fill gaps in the evidence base on the effectiveness of HMRE programming and to identify strategies for improving the delivery and effectiveness of these programs. The grantees do not necessarily represent the overall grant program. Further, the findings from STREAMS were not intended to generalize to all funded grantees.</p> <p>The STREAMS evaluation examined a range of populations that are served by HMRE programming. One site provided relationship skills education to youth in high school; two sites provided relationship skills education to adults as individuals; and two sites provided relationship skills education to adults as couples. The five sites also addressed other evaluation priorities for STREAMS, including examining programs that integrated relationship skills and economic stability services and assessing implementation factors such as program dosage and strategies to boost program attendance. For each site, the STREAMS evaluation included both a random assignment impact study and an in-depth process study.</p> <p>The five sites in the STREAMS evaluation are described below.</p> <list type="ordered"> <itm>More Than Conquerors Inc. (MTCI). Trained facilitators from MTCI, a nonprofit social service agency near Atlanta, Georgia, delivered two different versions of the Relationship Smarts PLUS (RQ+) Version 3.0 curriculum (Dibble Institute 2021) for high school students in two Atlanta-area high schools. For STREAMS, the impact study team evaluated the full 12-session curriculum and a shortened 8-session version against a control group of students who were not offered any HMRE programming (Alamillo and Doran 2022; Alamillo and Goesling 2021).</itm> <itm>Family and Workforce Centers of America (FWCA). FWCA delivered Career STREAMS, an integrated relationship education and pre-employment training program for adult job seekers with low incomes. Career STREAMS incorporated an HMRE curriculum called Within My Reach (Pearson et al. 2015) into an existing employment program offered through an employment center in St. Louis, Missouri. For STREAMS, the impact study team compared a group that was offered participation in the Career STREAMS program to a control group that was offered participation in FWCA's traditional employment training program (Goesling et al. 2022).</itm> <itm>University of Denver (Denver). In collaboration with the Denver Health hospital system, researchers from the University of Denver delivered MotherWise, a program for low-income adult women who either were expecting or just had a baby. MotherWise was based on the Within My Reach curriculum. For STREAMS, the impact study team compared a group that was offered the MotherWise program to a control group that was not offered the program (Patnaik and Wood 2021; Patnaik, Gonzalez, and Wood 2022).</itm> <itm>The Parenting Center (TPC). TPC in Fort Worth, Texas, delivered Empowering Families, a program for romantically involved, adult couples with low incomes who are raising children. The program featured workshop-based relationship education along with case management, employment services, and financial coaching. For STREAMS, the impact study team compared a group of couples that was offered participation in Empowering Families to a control group that was not offered the program (Wu et al. 2021).</itm> <itm>University of Florida (Florida). The University of Florida's Cooperative Extension Service offered ELEVATE, a workshop-based relationship education program for adult couples. Informed by behavioral theory, the STREAMS impact study team tested a text messaging intervention to improve program attendance and completion rates. Specifically, the study compared the program attendance rates of couples who received different types of text message reminders to a control group that received no reminders (Patnaik et al. 2022).</itm> </list> <p>The STREAMS restricted-use data collection includes 12 data files. Some of the files include data for a single site, while others combine data for more than one site. A user guide provides documentation for each file.</p>Cf: http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38662.v1

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