May 14, 2009

Data Collection Instruments for Evaluating Family Involvement

As evidence supporting the benefits of family involvement in learning mounts, there is an increasing demand for evaluation of family involvement initiatives and for additional research to inform practice and policy. Those designing and implementing family involvement programs must be responsive to increase the quality of the evidence base in the family involvement field by injecting rigorous methods into their evaluation. In order to assess family involvement interventions in a high-quality way, family involvement leaders, school administrators, policymakers, and researchers need access to evaluation tools.

Helen Westmoreland, Research Analyst Suzanne Bouffard, Project Manager Kelley O'Carroll, Graduate Research Assistant Heidi Rosenberg, Senior Research Analyst from the Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP) developed this resource as part of the ongoing effort to help practitioners and researchers collect and use data for continuous improvement. Data Collection Instruments for Evaluating Family Involvement provides stakeholders with commonly used and standardized data collection instruments on family involvement. This resource helps them learn about and choose rigorous family involvement instruments to assess impact and ensure quality.