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Andrew Clarkwest
Senior Researcher
Andrew Clarkwest is a senior researcher with expertise in experimental and quasi-experimental policy research. His experience covers a range of policy areas, including family formation and stability, employment, and quality of health care. His work reflects a particular interest in low-income couples and families and racial and ethnic disparities in well-being and treatment.
Clarkwest has conducted and participated in numerous studies of couple stability and well-being, including his key role in developing measures and analytical approaches for the Building Strong Families demonstration, an experimental evaluation of a relationship skills education program predominantly for low-income couples who conceived children outside of marriage.
Clarkwest is also a member of the team designing a randomized controlled evaluation of reemployment and training services funded through the Workforce Investment Act. His quasi-experimental design experience includes current work leading the development of regression discontinuity- and instrumental variables-based approaches to evaluate multiple initiatives coordinated by the Quality Improvement Organizations program to improve the quality of medical care in hospitals, nursing homes, and home health agencies. He also applies his expertise in quantitative study design as task leader for the systematic review of impact studies of programs designed to increase father involvement and improve couple relationships for the Strengthening Families Evidence Review and as a deputy principal investigator for the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse.
His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Marriage and Family and Social Science & Medicine. He holds a master’s degree in public policy and a doctorate in sociology and social policy from Harvard University. He worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan.
Staff Profile
- Areas of Expertise
- Key Projects
- Professional Activities
- Publications
- Experimental and quasi-experimental policy research
- Family formation and stability, employment, and quality of health care
- Low-income couples and families and racial and ethnic disparities in well-being and treatment
- Organizer and Presider, Regular Session on Social Policy Formation and Evaluation, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, August 2009
- Reviewer, Journal of Marriage and Family, Population Studies, Social Forces, and Social Science & Medicine
- "Catalog of Research: Programs for Low-Income Fathers" (June 2011)
- "BSF's Effects on Couples Who Attended Group Relationship Skills Sessions: A Special Analysis of 15-Month Data." The Building Strong Families Project (May 2011)
- "Neo-Materialist Theory and the Temporal Relationship Between Income Inequality and Longevity Change." Social Science & Medicine (May 2008)