Supporting Healthy Marriages

2003-2014

The Supporting Healthy Marriage study, led by MDRC, is an impact and implementation evaluation of healthy marriage education and related services for lower-income married couples with children provided by eight programs across the country. The study documented the interim (12-months) and long-term (30-month) impacts of the services, how the program services were implemented and participants’ experiences.

Data Availability

After being stripped of all identifying information, data sets from SHM have been made available to the larger research and policy community for secondary analysis. All data from the baseline, Management Information System, 12-mo follow-up survey, observational study, child assessment, and 30-mo adult and youth follow-up survey have been archived at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (see: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/34420 ).

Related Resources

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The Supporting Healthy Marriage Evaluation: A Family-Strengthening Program for Low-Income Families: Final Impacts from the Supporting Healthy Marriage Evaluation, Technical Supplement

April 4, 2014
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This technical supplement to the evaluation’s 30-month final impact report provides additional details about the study’s research design, data sources, measures construction, outcome and subgroup measures, analytic approach, and sensitivity and robustness tests of the impact estimates.  It also presents supplemental analyses of impacts by program and subgroup and on additional child, parenting and adult outcomes...

The Supporting Healthy Marriage Evaluation: A Family-Strengthening Program for Low-Income Families: Final Impacts from the Supporting Healthy Marriage Evaluation

April 4, 2014
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This report provides an overview of the Supporting Healthy Marriage program model and includes final (30-month) impact findings on a range of outcomes including marital stability, relationship quality, co-parenting, and adult and child well-being. The report indicates that the program did not increase the likelihood that couples stayed together. The program did produce small positive effects in the relationship quality domain, but it did not improve co-parenting or measurably benefit...

Do the Effects of a Relationship Education Program Vary for Different Types of Couples? Exploratory Subgroup Analysis in the Supporting Healthy Marriage Evaluation

April 4, 2014
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This paper presents the results of exploratory analyses of impacts for six additional subgroups that research suggests may be differentially affected by an intervention such as SHM. The study’s main 12-month and 30-month impact reports limited subgroup analysis to those defined by level of marital distress, family income-to-poverty level, and race/ethnicity. This paper explores whether the impacts of the SHM program on marital quality and stability outcomes differ according to six...

The Supporting Healthy Marriage Evaluation: Early Impacts on Low-Income Families, Technical Supplement

November 30, 2012
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The Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) evaluation was launched in 2003 to test the effectiveness of a voluntary...

The Supporting Healthy Marriage Evaluation: Final Implementation Findings

August 15, 2012
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The Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) evaluation was launched in 2003 to test the effectiveness of a skills-based...

The Supporting Healthy Marriage Evaluation: Early Impacts on Low-Income Families

February 15, 2012
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The Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) evaluation was launched in 2003 to test the effectiveness of a…

Early Lessons from the Implementation of a Relationship and Marriage Skills Program for Low-Income Married Couples

September 15, 2010
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This report presents early implementation and operational lessons from the Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM)…

Spending Time Together: Time Use Estimates for Economically Disadvantaged and Non-disadvantaged Married Couples in the United States, Working Paper

September 15, 2009
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A number of leading marriage and relationship education programs encourage couples to value and to understand…

Supporting Healthy Marriage: Designing a Marriage Education Demonstration and Evaluation for Low-Income Married Couples - Working Paper

August 15, 2008
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In recent decades, there has been a widening gap between higher rates of marital instability for economically…