What happens when you teach teens to navigate their romantic relationships? Is there a difference between boys and girls? Does dose or content matter? Join Drs. Alamillo and Doran of Mathematica as they share the insights of a randomized study of Georgia students who participated in two versions of the Relationship Smarts PLUS program. They will discuss the impact on students’ relationship skills, attitudes, knowledge, experiences, and the quality of their relationships one and three years later. As part of the sustained effort by the Administration for Children and Families to expand available evidence on healthy marriage and relationship education programs, Mathematic and its partner, Public Strategies, conducted the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services evaluation to help identify strategies for improving the delivery and effectiveness of HMRE programs. (MTCI), near Atlanta, Georgia. MTCI received a federal grant in 2015 to deliver Relationship Smarts PLUS Version 3.0 to youth in high…
Marriage
What happens when you organize college undergraduates to provide healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) to their peers in a structured service-learning class? This presentation will describe a community engagement strategy and pedagogical approach to prepare emerging professionals and strengthen romantic relationships by utilizing undergraduate peer educators to facilitate HMRE to other undergraduate students in their campus community. Join Drs. McElwain and Finnegan as they discuss the process of training, planning, and implementing content from the evidence-based Love Notes curriculum that helped college peers see human development and family relations concepts “come to life,” open a “whole new world” of career opportunities, and develop key professional skills. Objectives: Participants will be able to: Understand the benefits of a peer education model for delivering HMRE through structured university service-learning courses. Identify peer impact and practical gains of facilitating relationship education through a service-learning experience Learn from peer educators’ reflections on their…
Strengthening Facilitation Skills: A Training Curriculum for Programs Working with Youth, is a free, three-module curriculum designed to help facilitators of youth-serving programs improve the quality of their facilitation skills. It was developed as part of a formative evaluation of Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education programs conducted by Mathematica and its partner Public Strategies in conjunction with two community-based organizations called STREAMS. Join Erin Welch and Scott Roby for this webinar where they will share details about the curriculum’s development, describe its resources, and explain how it can be used to foster facilitators’ development. Learn how you can maximize learning and engagement using best practices and participant-centered and trauma-informed facilitation Objectives: Participants will internalize the goals and development process of the Strengthening Facilitation Skills curriculum. Participants will explore the content and resources included in the curriculum. Participants will understand how to use the curriculum and hear tips from the field….
Beginning in the mid-2000s, the federal government authorized funding to support healthy relationship education (HRE) for youth. These programs aim to improve young people’s relationship skills, knowledge, and behaviors and prepare them to build healthy romantic relationships in adulthood. In 2020, the federal government awarded more than $24 million to 25 programs serving high-school-age youth and young adults. In a project supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Mathematica has summarized the existing research on the effectiveness of HRE programs for youth. The research team identified and reviewed 15 impact studies of HRE programs for youth and summarized the findings using an evidence and gaps map. Join us as we discuss what we know and what we don’t know about the effectiveness of HRE programs for youth and promising future directions for continuing to build the evidence base for these programs. Objectives: Participants will learn: What an…
The “Success Sequence” refers to the concept of milestones a young person should complete in their life that are associated with greater economic self-sufficiency and family stability. These steps are most commonly understood as 1) finishing high school, 2) having a full-time job, and 3) waiting for marriage to have children. Up until now, a key part of the Success Sequence has been the order in which a young person achieves these milestones. With funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Mathematica conducted an economic analysis of the Success Sequence steps to assess their actual benefits for young people. Join us to discuss Mathematica’s findings about the Success Sequence including new thinking about the order of the milestones, what some alternative pathways may be for young people, and the significance of their order in creating economic self-sufficiency and family stability. Objectives: Participants will be able to explain:…
Americans today are increasingly waiting longer to marry, if they marry at all. Are today’s young people no longer interested in forming families? What types of relationships they are experiencing? Explore research on young people’s attitudes toward relationship formation, their dating and romantic relationships, and the quality of their relationships in this webinar. Program providers will better meet the needs of the youth they serve by placing their participants’ experiences within broader U.S. trends. In this webinar, Drs. Karen Benjamin Guzzo and Wendy D. Manning will discuss preliminary findings of new work from the Marriage Strengthening and Research Dissemination (MAST) Center on adolescents’ and young adults’ relationship expectations and experiences, drawing on a review of recent research as well as new analyses of the National Survey of Family Growth. Objectives: Webinar participants will understand: Teens’ and young adults’ expectations of cohabitation and marriage. Recent trends in dating and other romantic…
Does marriage still perform a valuable role in today’s society? Or, is it just another quaint tradition or something only a privileged few seek and attain? Join Kay Reed, Executive Director of The Dibble Institute, as she shares recent trends in family formation; explores the most recent data on marriage, cohabitation, and single parenting; and brings it back to what matters to children. Explore ways to integrate these skills and concepts about building healthy relationships into your programs, sometimes in unexpected ways. Objectives: Webinar participants will be able to: Describe current marriage trends and adolescents’ views of marriage. Identify current research questions in the field. Communicate why family form matters to adults, youth, and children. Presenters: Kay Reed, President and Executive Director, The Dibble Institute Who should attend: Healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood grantees, healthy relationship program staff, child abuse prevention advocates, mental health practitioners, family stabilization coaches, and employability specialists. When: Wednesday,…
Mission West Virginia, Inc., a non-profit, has been providing services to youth and families across West Virginia for over 22 years. The THINK Program (Teaching Health Instead of Nagging Kids) has been providing teen pregnancy prevention, healthy relationship education, and positive youth development for over 12 years, reaching over 100,000 middle- and high-school-aged youth. The THINK Program currently utilizes several Dibble programs to impact teen pregnancy. During this webinar, Jill Gwilt will discuss the THINK Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, which utilizes Love Notes EBP 2.1. Specifically, she will cover how they were able to scale up their large program in a rural area. Additionally, she will discuss how the curricula were chosen, how they developed long-standing partnerships, the importance of youth voices, creation of community groups, and more. Objectives: What “scale up” actually means out in the field. How to build and maintain long-lasting grant programs in rural areas. How…
Early family contexts can shape the trajectories of children’s adjustment throughout childhood. Families can provide a safe and stable base for children that is protective against adversity. However, when family environments are not stable (e.g., when parents/parent figures are moving in and out of the home), children may suffer. Join Dr. Elizabeth Karberg of Child Trends, as she explores how family instability in early childhood shapes children’s social (mal)adjustment over time. Objectives: How families in America are changing and what are common contexts for children’s early family experiences. Whether instability in families is linked with children’s social outcomes. Why instability in families is linked with children’s social outcomes. What this means for programming and interventions to support children’s positive development. Presenter: Elizabeth Karberg, PhD, Senior Research Scientist, Child Trends Resources: April 2020 Webinar PPT Child Trends Brief April 2020 Additional Resources Q&A from the Webinar
Becky Antle, Ph.D., Professor of Social Work and esteemed University Scholar at the University of Louisville, won The Dibble Institute’s national competition to evaluate Mind Matters: Overcoming Adversity and Building Resilience in 2019. As a result, Dr. Antle and her colleagues are conducting a randomized control trial to examine the impact of Mind Matters on a host of outcomes related to youths’ emotional regulation, anxiety, interpersonal skills, and resilience. Join the researchers on this project as they discuss their initial findings from the pilot of Mind Matters with high needs youth in the Louisville community. They will focus on youth-related outcomes, lessons learned, and tips for implementing the Mind Matters curriculum. Objectives: Specifically, webinar attendees will learn: 1. How Mind Matters is being implemented and evaluated in the pilot 2. How Mind Matters is making a difference with the youth being served. Presenter: Becky Antle, Ph.D., MSSW, MFTA, Professor and University Scholar, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY….
More than Conquerors, Inc. (MTCI) is nonprofit social service provider in Conyers, Georgia, with a long history of delivering relationship education to high school students. With funding from the Office of Family Assistance at the Administration for Children and Families, MTCI is currently partnering with staff from Mathematica Policy Research and Public Strategies to deliver and evaluate the Relationship Smarts PLUS curriculum in two Atlanta-area high schools. In this webinar, Phillippia and Brian will discuss emerging lessons from the evaluation and MTCI’s long history of serving youth. The lessons include MTCI’s process for hiring, training, and supporting facilitators to achieve optimal student engagement and impact. They will also include general tips for selecting a curriculum, engaging youth, and making the content relevant for students. Specifically, webinar attendees will learn: The steps and characteristics prioritized when hiring facilitators. How to select the right curriculum for your population. How to engage youth in…
Marline Pearson, author of Love Notes and Relationship Smarts PLUS, will make the case why a 4thR is needed for increasing student success. Learn why relationship education must be a central tool to help young people reach their school, work, and family goals by increasing their agency over their love lives. She will cover recent research and share evidence-based solutions to the pressing problems that face today’s youth. Attendees will: Identify at least 2 key reasons why relationship education is key to helping students succeed. Describe current trends that could be reversed by teaching relationship education. Identify 2 evidence based strategies that could be implemented to help students succeed. Presenter: Marline E. Pearson, M.A., Author, Love Notes and Relationship Smarts PLUS. Resources: February 2019 Webinar PPT
Dr. Temple will discuss sexting (a combination of the words sex and texting), the practice of electronically sending sexually explicit images or messages from one person to another. Sexting has received an abundance of attention in the popular press. Much of this attention has been limited to (1) legal cases in which teens who create, send, receive, store, and/or disseminate nude pictures of themselves or another teen face criminal charges including child pornography, and (2) cases in which teens are harassed and bullied as a result of the nude picture being distributed beyond the intended audience. Although media reports often cite various examples of sexting leading to bullying, cyber-bullying, and even suicide, we understand very little about the public health importance of sexting. Using data from his ongoing longitudinal study of adolescent health, as well as a recent meta-analysis, Dr. Temple will examine the prevalence of sexting behaviors as well…
Many first romantic relationships occur during adolescence. These relationships can help shape a variety of experiences (both positive and negative). Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) programs for youth can shape these experiences by improving youth attitudes and expectations concerning romantic relationships and by helping youth develop key skills to form healthy relationships and avoid unhealthy relationships. This webinar will provide participants with an in-depth look of federally funded HMRE programs for youth. Quantitative and qualitative data of the programs will be looked at. At the end of this webinar, participants will be able to: Describe the organizations implementing federally funded HMRE programs for youth and the youth served by these programs Assess the practices identified through research and evaluation to be optimal for serving youth most effectively; and Identify promising approaches used by grantees to better serve youth in HMRE programs Presenter: Mindy E. Scott, Ph.D., Deputy Program Area Director and…
WEBINAR: Working Together: Developing & Implementing a Sustainable Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program
In October 2016, Dr. Michelle Toews and her colleagues at Kansas State University received a grant to develop, implement, and evaluate the #RELATIONSHIPGOALS program, a sexual risk avoidance education intervention with seventh- and ninth-grade students from a local school district. The goal of program is to empower youth to make healthy decisions by teaching them the benefits associated with self-regulation, healthy relationships and goal setting, while also teaching them how to resist sexual coercion, dating violence and other risky behaviors. The curriculum used in the intervention is Relationship Smarts PLUS, Sexual Risk Avoidance Adaptation. Preliminary results suggest the program is reaching its goal. Specifically, students report that they love the program and share that one of the most important things they learn is how to identify healthy and unhealthy relationships. They also say the program teaches them skills they need to develop healthy relationships, particularly effective communication skills, which they…
A record 55 percent of Millennial parents (ages 28-34) have put childbearing before marriage, according to a new analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistic’s Panel data by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies. The rise of nontraditional routes into parenthood among Millennials is one indicator that today’s young adults are taking increasingly divergent paths toward adulthood, including family formation. New research by Dr. Wilcox and others shows that the success sequence works even for young adults today. In fact, 86% of Millennials who follow the sequence have now moved into the middle class and only 3% of Millennials who follow the sequence are poor today. Given the importance of education, work, and marriage—even for a generation that has taken increasingly circuitous routes into adulthood—Dr. Wilcox challenges policymakers, business leaders, and civic leaders to advance public policies and cultural changes to make his sequence both more attainable…
The field of couple and relationship education is dominated by a focus on helping committed couples strengthen their relationship. In this webinar we will review several lines of research to argue that the relationship education field should give greater priority to youth relationship education — individually oriented relationship literacy education for adolescents and young adults. Serious problems are common in adolescent and young adult romantic relationships and increasing numbers of youth follow paths from adolescence to marriage that make it harder for them to form and sustain a healthy marriage. Early evidence on the effectiveness of individually oriented youth relationship education provides some reason for optimism. The webinar will conclude by exploring implications of this proposed shift in the field for practice and policy. Participants will learn: How the RE field historically has been dominated by a focus on committed couples. A research-based argument for why it can be problematic…
Many first romantic relationships occur during adolescence. These relationships can help shape a variety of experiences (both positive and negative). Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) programs for youth can shape these experiences by improving youth attitudes and expectations concerning romantic relationships and by helping youth develop key skills to form healthy relationships and avoid unhealthy relationships. This webinar will provide participants with a better understanding of federally funded HMRE programs for youth and will describe best practices for serving youth based on research and evaluation findings. At the end of this webinar, participants will be able to: Describe the organizations implementing HMRE programs and the youth served by these programs Assess the alignment of HMRE programs for youth with best practices in the field Presenter: Mindy E. Scott, Ph.D., Deputy Program Area Director and Senior Research Scientist with Child Trends Resources: Snapshot of HMRE Programs for Youth
To celebrate, we have a FREE gift for you! In-depth movie discussion guides that will help you have rich discussions with your young people about relationships using current and classic movies. Think “Frozen,” “Cheaper by the Dozen,” “Antwone Fisher,” “Hunger Games,” and more. Movies can help students see the complexities and joys of a wide variety of relationships, including friendships and family, infatuations and first romances, enduring commitments and marriage. Discussing movies helps young people connect ideas in film to choices in real life. In this webinar, you will see how the Dibble movie guides can unpack important concepts, how youth learn what “healthy” looks like, and why family formation matters. Presenters: Dixie Zittlow, Director of Outreach, The Dibble Institute and Aaron Larson, Acquisition and Product Coordinator, The Dibble Institute
Over half of all births to young adults in the United States now occur outside of marriage, and many are unplanned. The result is increased poverty and inequality for children. The left argues for more social support for unmarried parents; the right argues for a return to traditional marriage. In Generation Unbound, Isabel V. Sawhill offers a third approach: change “drifters” into “planners.” In a well-written and accessible survey of the impact of family structure on child well-being, Sawhill contrasts “planners,” who are delaying parenthood until after they marry, with “drifters,” who are having unplanned children early and outside of marriage. These two distinct patterns are contributing to an emerging class divide and threatening social mobility in the United States. Sawhill draws on insights from the new field of behavioral economics, showing that it is possible, by changing the default, to move from a culture that accepts a high number of…