Evaluation

The Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) supports several evaluation activities to continue to build the evidence base for what works to prevent teenage pregnancy.  These evaluation activities include numerous rigorous program evaluations conducted by grantees as well as two large multi-site federal evaluations conducted under contract.

 OAH provides funding to 35 Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) grantees to conduct an independent, rigorous evaluation of their programs – 16 grantees are evaluating their efforts to replicate evidence-based programs and 19 are evaluating new and innovative teen pregnancy prevention programs. In addition, OAH funds two large multi-site federal evaluations focused on teen pregnancy prevention. The first, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Replication Study, is examining multiple replications of three evidence-based program models and the second, the Pregnancy Prevention Approaches evaluation, is evaluating seven new and innovative models for preventing teen pregnancy.  

These HHS evaluation efforts will enable the Department to answer a range of research questions that are complementary to, rather than duplicative of, one another. Specifically, OAH is interested in: (1) adding to the evidence base by evaluating new and untested program models and innovative strategies; and (2) understanding how to effectively replicate and implement evidence-based program models and how to achieve impacts that were found in the original evaluations.

The grantee-led and federal-led evaluation efforts are described in the sections below. Read more about the Teen Pregnancy Prevention grant programs here.

Grantee-Led Evaluation

OAH Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program grantees are conducting random assignment and quasi experimental evaluations  supported by a federally sponsored evaluation technical assistance contractor (Mathematica Policy Research). The contractor has reviewed each of the local evaluation designs to ensure they are rigorous and feasible and continues to provide ongoing technical assistance to grantees.

Federal-Led Evaluation

OAH funds two large, multi-site federal evaluations focused on teen pregnancy prevention.

  • Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Replication Evaluation is an experimental evaluation study that will examine the implementation and impacts of three OAH TPP replications of three different evidence-based program models, for a total of nine sites. The study will examine whether program models that were commonly chosen by replication grantees and widely used in the field can achieve impacts with different populations and settings. The three program models selected for the evaluation include Reducing the Risk, ¡Cuídate!, and Safer Sex.  Implementation and short-term impact findings are anticipated in 2015. The contractor is Abt Associates. 
  • Evaluation of Pregnancy Prevention Approaches (PPA) is an experimental evaluation study focused on assessing the implementation and impacts of innovative strategies and untested approaches for preventing teenage pregnancy. There are three OAH TPP Research and Demonstration grantees, three ACYF Personal Responsibility Education Program Innovative Strategies (PREIS) grantees, and one non-federally funded program included in the evaluation. Implementation reports are expected between September 2012 and October 2013 and a short-term impact report across the sites is expected Summer 2015.  The contractor is Mathematica Policy Research.  Read more at: http://www.pregnancypreventionapproaches.info
    • COMING SOON—Read the Reports

Evaluation Coordination Across HHS

A Federal Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Coordination Workgroup was developed to design and manage a coordinated strategy of HHS teen pregnancy prevention activities and evaluation efforts. The workgroup involves research and program staff  from the Office of Adolescent Health (OAH), Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),  and the Administration for Children Youth and Families (ACYF).  The participating agencies have developed strong working relationships which have had a number of benefits for federal work and for the communities and states which are on the front lines working with high risk youth. For example, OAH worked in collaboration with OMB to create the funding announcements for of each of the individual teen pregnancy prevention programs as well as performance measures. Most recently, the OAH workgroup has enabled the Department to collaborate on the new evaluation efforts and maximize the questions we can answer across the initiative, including the development of common core measures to be used across evaluation studies.

Last updated: September 13, 2012