The Fatherhood TIES team—which includes researchers from MDRC, Abt Associates, and MEF Associates—will accomplish the project’s goals through several key activities. Importantly, Fatherhood TIES will utilize a robust and active engagement approach throughout that will include obtaining input on each phase of the work from an advisory committee made up of fathers, fatherhood program staff, subject matter experts, and others. The team will define and prioritize core components to test by working with programs serving fathers directly in local communities across the country and analyzing lessons from earlier studies and program participation datasets. The team will then collaborate with a set of fatherhood programs to put the core components into practice and collect and analyze data on their effects on fathers’ outcomes. The team will share findings and lessons by publishing a variety of products, such as reports, briefs, and how-to guides, that highlight the perspectives of fathers and staff, and help policymakers, researchers, and program operators apply lessons from the project.

The project intends to engage four fatherhood programs to implement and test the selected core components and will enroll up to 3,000 fathers and staff from these participating programs to participate. The study team is expecting to start collecting data in 2023.