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Session Title: Making Sense of Mobility: Household Survey Data From Comprehensive Community Initiatives, Implications for Evaluation and Theory
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Panel Session 664 to be held in Pratt Room, Section A on Friday, November 9, 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM
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Sponsored by the Non-profit and Foundations Evaluation TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Cindy Guy,
Annie E Casey Foundation,
cguy@aecf.org
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| Discussant(s):
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| Claudia Coulton,
Case Western Reserve University,
claudia.coulton@case.edu
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| Abstract:
Comprehensive community initiatives (CCIs) seek to build resident capacity, raise and direct resources, and enhance services and supports to improve the wellbeing of children and families living in distressed communities. Recently analyzed household survey data from formative and impact studies of CCIs point to high levels of resident mobility in participant communities; posing challenges to the evaluation and theory of these initiatives. In a panel chaired by Cindy Guy of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, representatives of two national evaluation teams - the Urban Institute team conducting data analysis for Casey's Making Connections Initiative, and the NYU/Wagner School evaluators of the Robert Wood Johnson's Urban Health Initiative(UHI) - are joined by the policy advisor at one of the UHI sites and staff of the Center for Urban Poverty and Community Development at Case Western Reserve to discuss these challenges and the implications for evaluation and theory building moving forward.
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Family Mobility and Neighborhood Change: Implications for Evaluation and Design From the Making Connections Initiative
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| Marge Turner,
Urban Institute,
maturner@ui.urban.org
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Marge Turner, Director of the Urban Institute's Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, is the lead analyst on a ten-site data collection effort that includes a longitudinal family panel and a neighborhood cross-sectional survey designed to provide planning, management, and evaluation data for the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Making Connections initiative, a neighborhood-focused family-strengthening initiative. In a recent analysis of data from neighborhoods in Denver, Des Moines, Indianapolis, San Antonio and White Center, WA, Ms. Turner found that more than half of all families with children had moved in the first three years of the initiative, many of them leaving the neighborhood. In this presentation she will discuss:
- Factors affecting family mobility and residential stability;
- The different ways in which neighborhoods affect family economic success (as launching pads to success; as poverty traps, etc);
- The conceptual challenges to evaluation and initiative design that such mobility presents.
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Accounting for Mobility in a Multi-site, Multi-method Evaluation of Comprehensive Community Change
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| Beth Weitzman,
New York University,
beth.weitzman@nyu.edu
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| Charles Brecher,
New York University,
charles.brecher@nyu.edu
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| Tod Mijanovich,
New York University,
tm11@nyu.edu
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| Diana Silver,
New York University,
diana.silver@nyu.edu
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The principal investigator of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Urban Health Initiative, Dr. Weitzman and her colleagues at NYU's Wagner School are in the process of completing an impact analysis of this five city initiative that sought to measurably improve health and safety outcomes for children and youth in Baltimore, Detroit, Oakland, Philadelphia and Richmond from 1996 -2006. Using a Theory of Change approach to evaluation coupled with a quasi-experimental comparison group design, and employing city fixed effects in their final analysis, Dr. Weitzman and her team have sought to capture initiative impacts even amidst the complexity and fluidity of distressed urban communities. They will discuss how they have addressed issues of mobility in their impact analyses, and how the technical and conceptual ways these issues are addressed complicates their findings.
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Patterns of Residential Longevity in Baltimore: Implications for Initiative Theory, Design and Evaluation
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| Martha Holleman,
The Safe and Sound Campaign,
mholleman@safeandsound.org
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Martha Holliman served as Policy Advisor for the Baltimore Safe and Sound Campaign - the Baltimore site of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Urban Health Initiative (UHI) - from 1996 -2006 and is currently a WT Grant Foundation Distinguished Fellow, working with the national evaluation team for the UHI at NYU/ Wagner. She has been using survey data collected by the UHI evaluation to better understand patterns of residential mobility and longevity in Baltimore and the implications of these patterns for future work aimed at improving the well being of children in her city. She brings a practitioner's voice to the panel and will discuss the implications of emerging findings on residential mobility for initiative theory, design and evaluation.
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