Rigorous Evaluation in Tribal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting: A Series of Briefs

The Tribal Home Visiting Program, part of the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV), is a federally funded initiative that supports the provision of home visiting services to American Indian and Alaska Native families and children.

Each Tribal Home Visiting grantee was required to develop a program evaluation that was driven by community questions and met the Administration for Children and Families’ established criteria for rigor. The Tribal Evaluation Institute’s brief series tells the story of grantees’ experiences designing and implementing evaluation studies in their communities.

The brief series includes—

• Brief 1: An Overview of Local Evaluations
• Brief 2: Supporting Tribal Home Visiting Grantees in Meeting the MIECHV Evaluation Requirements
• Brief 3: Engaging Tribal Communities in Evaluation
• Brief 4: Addressing Evaluation Challenges
• Brief 5: Evaluation Findings and Implications

The briefs holistically examine each of these topic areas and the grantees’ experiences designing and conducting rigorous program evaluations. The series was designed to help federal staff and leadership support tribal communities to build local evaluation capacity. Key findings and takeaways were identified for each brief. Some of those takeaways include—

• Understand the history and context of evaluation in tribal communities. Allow ample time and ensure a collaborative, iterative process to arrive at an appropriate, flexible evaluation plan.
• Recognize that the diversity of tribal communities may require flexibility in evaluation designs and questions.
• Technical assistance providers with experience and skill supporting tribal communities in program evaluation can support grantees to meet evaluation requirements in locally meaningful ways.
• Individuals designing grant requirements for projects with tribal communities should be familiar with the importance of community engagement.
• Build in time for grantees to complete institutional review board and other local review processes, which often take longer than anticipated.
• Federal staff overseeing evaluation studies in tribal communities should be familiar with the contextual factors that may influence how study findings are interpreted and set evaluation expectations appropriately.