ERIC Number: ED673865
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Jan
Pages: 60
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Analysis Plan for the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (MIHOPE) Kindergarten Follow-Up. OPRE Report 2025-024
Kristen Faucetta; Ximena A. Portilla
Administration for Children & Families
This document describes plans for the analysis of the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (MIHOPE) follow-up data collected when participating children were in kindergarten or first grade. The overarching goal of MIHOPE is to provide information about whether families and children benefit from Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program--funded early childhood home visiting programs as they operated from 2012 to 2017, and if so, how. The MIECHV Program is administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in collaboration with the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). To examine the potential long-term effects of the MIECHV Program on children and families, a follow-up when children were in kindergarten (approximately five to six years after women enrolled in the MIHOPE randomized controlled trial) was planned. This time point was chosen in part because measuring children's cognitive, behavioral, self-regulatory, and social-emotional skills at the outset of formal schooling could provide important data on the longer-term effects of home visiting. Because of the broad range of outcomes that home visiting aims to affect, the study planned to collect a wide range of data on child and family well-being. This analysis plan begins by describing the intended kindergarten design and how the study team adjusted those plans in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally, data collection was planned to occur during the four school years in which children in the sample were slated to attend kindergarten: 2018-2019 (Cohort 1), 2019-2020 (Cohort 2), 2020-2021 (Cohort 3), and 2021-2022 (Cohort 4). Due to the pandemic, data collection was paused during the 2020-2021 school year and resumed during the 2021-2022 school year, when children in Cohort 3 were slated to attend first grade and those in Cohort 4 were slated to attend kindergarten. In light of the ongoing pandemic at that time, the study team adapted the kindergarten data collection so that all in-home assessments for Cohorts 3 and 4 could be conducted virtually. The study team also designed and implemented a brief web survey and qualitative interviews from late 2020 to early 2021 to understand how MIHOPE families were experiencing the pandemic and gather information to contextualize the study's kindergarten findings. Next, the analysis plan describes the study team's plans for the kindergarten analyses, which include conducting impact and mediation analyses. For the impact analyses, the study team will examine and report on the estimated effects of home visiting on 66 child and family outcomes in five outcome areas. To focus the impact analyses and aid in the interpretation of the results given the large number of individual outcomes, the study team will answer several topical research questions using omnibus tests to examine the pattern of effects across the outcomes that answer each research question. The prespecified research questions are: (1) Did home visiting affect outcomes that could be improved through direct interactions between parents and home visitors?; (2) Did home visiting affect children's social-emotional functioning in the home context?; (3) Did home visiting affect children's social-emotional functioning in school settings?; (4) Did home visiting affect children's language, early math, and cognitive skills?; (5) Did home visiting affect parent-child interactions?; (6) Did home visiting affect aggression, conflict, violence, and maltreatment?; (7) Did home visiting affect material hardship, employment, education, and income?; and (8) Did home visiting affect maternal mental and behavioral health? The study team will draw on the answers to these multiple questions in interpreting the effects of home visiting at the kindergarten follow-up. The study team will also conduct exploratory analyses to determine whether effects differ across prespecified subgroups of families, defined using family characteristics. To shed light on pathways or mechanisms that might explain how home visiting influenced kindergarten outcomes, the study team will conduct mediation analyses that estimate the hypothetical mechanisms or pathways to individual statistically significant kindergarten outcomes of interest, using the information about children's development and families' well-being measured at earlier waves of MIHOPE. Though the results will not allow for causal interpretation of the estimates, these exploratory analyses can help identify intermediate outcomes from earlier waves that are most likely to have contributed to impacts on outcomes at the kindergarten follow-up.
Descriptors: Mothers, Infants, Home Programs, Program Evaluation, Kindergarten, Grade 1, Federal Programs, Longitudinal Studies, Thinking Skills, Child Behavior, Self Management, Interpersonal Competence, Emotional Development, Family Environment, Educational Environment, Family Income, Mental Health, Child Development, COVID-19, Pandemics, Parent Child Relationship
Administration for Children & Families. US Department of Health and Human Services, 370 L'Enfant Promenade SW, Washington, DC 20447. Web site: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: Early Childhood Education; Elementary Education; Kindergarten; Primary Education; Grade 1
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: Administration for Children and Families (DHHS), Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE); MDRC
Grant or Contract Numbers: HHSP233201500059I
Author Affiliations: N/A


