Tag: Q-ODM Toolbox

Impact Evaluation for the Parent Child Plus Program

The Newark Trust for Education (NTE) Parent Child Plus (PC+) program is an evidence-based early childhood education program for families in the Newark, NJ. NTE seeks to evaluate performance by conducting analyses of existing data for a cohort of over 80 families, assessed four times over 46 weeks using observational measures of parenting practices and children’s socio-emotional skills. PC+ is intended to result in “improved child behaviors related to social‐emotional development and self‐regulation skills” (Organizational Research Services [ORS], 2010, p. 23).

The Quality-Impact-Equity Design and Methods (QDM) Toolbox (Smith, Peck, Roy, & Smith, 2019; Smith, Peck, & McNeil, 2020) was used to: (a) reconfigure existing measures for Parenting Practice Quality and Child SEL Skill to maximize reliability and validity for measuring socio-emotional skills and learning (SEL); (b) produce holistic profiles of parent and child skill (e.g., “whole child”) at each timepoint; and (c) apply pattern-centered analytics to estimate impact and equity effects of the PC+ program as implemented in Newark. Please note: We define impact in terms of the actual “in-the-world” structure of causes and effects, not in terms of counterfactuals. A brief description of the QDM methodology is provided in Appendix A (see also Smith et al., 2019)..

The PC+ program results reveal an overall impact pattern that suggests both a strong relation between parent and child skills and an effect of home visitors on both parent and child skills. Although, in almost all cases, the children of parents with high or growing parenting skills outperformed children with low or declining parenting skills, many children with parents in the low-skill profile for Parenting Practice Quality still experienced growth in SEL skills. This finding suggests that PC+ is working as it should, with parents and home visitors both having direct effects on child SEL skill growth. To fully demonstrate the impact of the NTE PC+ program given this “triadic” causal flow, we recommend (a) improving measures of PC+ fidelity and (b) including a small no-program sample of parents and children.

Contact QTurn to request Report Appendices A-I.

Measuring Socio-Emotional Skill, Impact, and Equity Outcomes

The positivist theory and methodology used by most researchers and evaluators is poorly suited for addressing the formative explanations that guide continuous quality improvement (CQI) processes and the nuanced impact models that pertain to questions about how and how much. QTurn’s Quality-Outcomes Design and Methods (Q-ODM) toolbox (Peck & Smith, 2020b) was created to address fundamental problems in the evaluation of out-of-school time (OST) programs (e.g., afterschool, child care, drop-in, mentoring, tutoring, etc.). In this white paper, we extend from a framework for individual socio-emotional (SEL) skills (Peck & Smith, 2020a) to address several issues in the applied measurement of individual SEL skills.

We present steps to (a) identify the real objects we seek to represent with measurement and models (i.e., the parts of an individual’s SEL skill set and the type and amount of skill change that is likely to occur during the program) and (b) produce SEL skill indicators and measures that are feasible and valid for both CQI and impact evaluation uses. With improved reasoning and evidence about the parts of SEL skill and individual skill change, we hope to help organizations produce local evidence and advocate both internally and externally for improved OST policies and increased investment.