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    • Building Strong Families (BSF)

    Metadata Updated: September 6, 2025

    The Building Strong Families (BSF) project examined the effectiveness of programs designed to improve child well-being and strengthen the relationships of low-income couples through relationship skills education. It surveyed couples 15 months and 36 months after having applied to and been accepted into a Building Stronger Families (BSF) program at one of eight locations offering services to unwed couples expecting, or having recently had a baby. Major topics included family structure, parental involvement with children, relationships, personal and parental well-being, utilization of services such as workshops to help their relationship and parenting skills, paternity and child support, and family self-sufficiency. Respondents were asked for information on recently born children and relationship status, how much time they spent with their children, their level of satisfaction with their current relationship, substance use, if they had attended relationship and parental counseling, whether they were legally required to provide child support, employment, and family background. Additional information was asked about domestic violence and child abuse, legal trouble, past sexual history, and child development. The 36-month data collection effort also included direct assessments of parenting and child development. The quality of the parenting relationship was assessed for both mothers and fathers and was based on a semi-structured play activity, "the two-bag task." This interaction was videotaped and later coded by trained assessors on multiple dimensions of parenting. During assessments with mothers, the focal child's language development was also assessed using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Demographic data includes race, education level, age, income, and marital status. The data collection is comprised of seven parts. Part 1: the BSF Eligibility and Baseline Survey Data file; Part 2: the BSF 15-Month Follow-up Survey Data file; Part 3: the program participation data file; Part 4: the BSF 15-month follow-up analysis file; Part 5: the BSF 36-Month Follow-up Survey Data file; Part 6: the mother-child in-home assessment; and Part 7: the BSF 36-Month Follow-up analysis file.

    Units of Response: Low-income couples with children

    Type of Data: Evaluation

    Tribal Data: No

    COVID-19 Data: No

    Periodicity: One-time

    SORN: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/09/19/2022-20139/privacy-act-of-1974-system-of-records

    Data Use Agreement: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/rpxlogin

    Data Use Agreement Location: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/studies/29781/datadocumentation

    Equity Indicators: Sex

    Granularity: Household;Individual

    Spatial: United States

    Geocoding: Unavailable

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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    Dates

    Metadata Created Date September 6, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date September 6, 2025

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from Healthdata.gov

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date September 6, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date September 6, 2025
    Publisher ACF
    Maintainer
    Identifier https://healthdata.gov/api/views/iqnt-vkyk
    Data First Published 2023-11-17
    Data Last Modified 2025-07-03
    Category ACF
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 009:70
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Metadata Catalog ID https://healthdata.gov/data.json
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Harvest Object Id cf1b11c2-e575-478f-972d-ad811ba17236
    Harvest Source Id 651e43b2-321c-4e4c-b86a-835cfc342cb0
    Harvest Source Title Healthdata.gov
    Homepage URL https://www.acf.hhs.gov/opre/project/building-strong-families-2002-2013
    Program Code 009:103
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 402fb896b6cc5d957b7bfd063c22119aea6d7ebad4d89b8bf4e65f92efee0e7d
    Source Schema Version 1.1

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