Family Support Topics

• Strengthening Families
• Focusing on Youth
• Understanding TANF
• Clients

The Oklahoma Marriage Initiative: An Overview

In the late 1990s, Oklahoma undertook an innovative strategy to strengthen families by reducing its divorce and nonmarital childbearing rates. Since then, the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative (OMI) has focused on building statewide capacity to deliver instruction in marriage and relationship skills—an approach that has stimulated public awareness and dialogue about the effects of marriage and divorce. The OMI was begun by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services with $10 million from its TANF block grant and is designed to reduce divorce through a multi-sector strategy with broad community support and the delivery of marriage and relationship skills education.

Mathematica's study of the OMI—the longest running statewide marriage initiative in the United States—documented and analyzed the context from which the initiative developed; its overall goals and objectives; and its evolution, organizational structure, partnerships, and service delivery system. The process study documented the program's evolution, its strategy and design, implementation approaches, the role of research in shaping implementation strategy, and goals for changing the systems and culture within which it operates. Data were gathered through in-person interviews, focus groups, direct observation of program operations, and from administrative data and other existing documentation.

Publications

"Marriage and Relationship Skills Education as a Way to Prepare Prisoners for Reintegration" (January 2009)
"The Oklahoma Marriage Initiative: A Process Evaluation" (December 2008)
"The Promise and Challenge of Using Volunteers to Provide Community-Based Marriage Education" (December 2008)
"Using Research to Guide the Development of an Evolving Statewide Initiative" (July 2008)
"How Oklahoma Laid the Foundation for Its Marriage Initiative" (July 2008)
"Starting Early: How the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative Helps Schools Prepare Young People for Healthy Marriages" (June 2008)
"The Oklahoma Marriage Initiative: A Process Evaluation" (May 2008)
"An Overview of the Longest-Running Statewide Marriage Initiative in the U.S." (December 2006)