DOI: 10.3886/e206883v1
title: HRC_FatherhoodFIRE_20202025

description: Healthy Relationships California (HRC) offered the
California Fatherhood: Family-Focused, Interconnected, Resilient, and Essential
(Cal-FIRE) program which included the R3 Academy for Dads workshop. This is a
robust 24-hour workshop for fathers age 18 and over, who resided in the state
of California. This workshop is an evidence-based parenting curriculum that
helps fathers strengthen their three most important relationships–with their
child(ren), with their partner/co-parent, and at work (Cowan et al., 2022). The
workshop also included two evidence-based components that address economic
stability.
description: Response Rates: Eligibility Survey: 1,060<br>Applicants Characteristics Survey: 1,061<br>Entrance Survey: 1,061<br>Exit Survey: 524<br>Follow-up Survey: 207<br>Session Attendance: 1,055
description: Participants were participants in Healthy Relationship California's R3 Academy for Dads program. In order to attend the program participants were required to be fathers or father figures who were 18 years old or older and lived in the state California.
description: Fathers or father figures who were 18 years of age or older and lived in the state of California. .
description: other; web-based survey; <b>Survey Data Collection</b>Participants
were administered a total of five surveys: Eligibility survey (ES), Applicant
Characteristics survey (ACS), Entrance survey, Exit survey, and Follow-up
survey. All surveys had an English and a Spanish option.

 

<br><b>Eligibility
Survey</b> Participants completed the ES online through
SurveyMonkey before enrolling in the workshop. Generally, participants had to
complete the ES at least 10 days before the first session of their workshop to
ensure they had time to complete their enrollment before the first session of
their desired workshop. This was the only survey that participants always
completed independently. 

The ES had multiple purposes. First was to ensure
participants met eligibility requirements which were: 1) living in the state of
California, 2) being 18 years of age or older, and 3) being a father or father
figure. The survey also screened for domestic violence and child maltreatment.
A case manager, who was a local expert in these fields, reviewed all domestic
violence and child maltreatment responses on the ES. If responses were blank or
indicated the presence of domestic violence or child maltreatment, the father
was contacted by a case manager who used their expertise to decide whether the
father should be allowed to attend the workshop or be provided with alternate
resources. The consent form was also included at the end of the ES and all
participants had to indicate ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ before they could be enrolled in the
workshop. Fathers were required to complete the ES ten business days before
beginning their workshop to have sufficient time to complete their ACS and
Entrance surveys before the workshop began. 

The ES was also used to collect contact information
from participants. Unlike the other surveys, this survey was recorded and
included even if it was not complete. This is because if the participants had
enough contact information, their responses would be manually transferred into
the program’s database so that program staff could reach out to the applicant
to see if they were interested in enrolling in the program. Participants were
not required to complete the ES before they could enroll. However, they were
sent a link so they could respond to the consent form to indicate whether or
not they agreed to be part of the evaluation. <br><b>nFORM
2.0 Surveys<br></b> The ACS, Entrance, and Exit surveys are all collected
using the Information, Family Outcomes, Reporting, and Management (nFORM 2.0)
system which is used by Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE)
programs to collect information on program participants. The attempted
completion of these surveys is required by HMRE. Participants completed these
surveys over the phone with help from program staff. If a participant requested
to complete the surveys on their own, they were sent three separate emails containing
the survey link, nFORM 2.0 clientID, and survey passcode. If their email
address had their full first and last name, then the clientID was provided via
text. The passcode expired after 4 days so if the participants failed to
complete the survey in time they had to contact staff for a new code. <br><b>Applicant
Characteristics survey</b><b> </b>ACS surveys were required to be completed 5 working days
before the workshop start date. Completing the ACS survey represented
completion of enrollment. Program staff administered the ACS survey via phone
call. On rare occasions when participants requested to complete the survey on
their own using the protocol discussed in the previous paragraph. Participants
were also notified the date by which they had to complete their survey if they
wanted to be able to attend their desired workshop. <br><b>Entrance survey</b>The Entrance
survey was generally completed in the same phone call as ACS. However, on the
rare occasion the two were not administered together, the participant had until
session 2 of their workshop to complete the Entrance survey. If they missed
this deadline, they were not able to complete the Entrance survey but were
still contacted to complete the Exit survey. <br><b>Exit survey</b>The Exit survey was
administered within 30-days of program completion. The HRC staff assigned to
the participant made three attempts to contact the participant to schedule and
complete an Exit survey. If they were unable to complete the survey with the
participant after 3 attempted contacts, they followed the protocol described
previously. Given that some participants took longer to complete the Exit
survey, we included fathers who completed their Exit survey within 65 days of
program completion, because we felt their responses were still appropriate to
include in the final data. <br><b>Follow-up survey</b>  The Follow-up survey was collected via SurveyMonkey.
Collection for this survey did not begin until 4 months after the last session
of the participants’ workshop. Program staff were then given a 30-day period
during which to contact the participants to complete the Follow-up survey.
After 3 attempted contacts, participants were sent the survey link and their
clientid in two separate emails and/or text message. The reason only two were
needed was because there is no passcode for SurveyMonkey. This also means that
participants could use the information to complete their Follow-up survey at
any time convenient to them even if it was not within the 30-days survey
collection window. 

In 2024, problems in data collection surfaced, the
evaluation for which this data was collected was changed making it so the
Follow-up survey was no longer necessary for the evaluation data. Despite this
change, the program continued to collect Follow-up surveys. However, the
protocol changed so that program staff sent emails with instructions on
completing the surveys instead of attempting to contact the participants to
administer the surveys over the phone. However, in 2025 staffing issues arose
that required staff to focus more attention on enrollment and the nFORM 2.0
surveys. Thus the decision was made to stop collecting Follow-up surveys for
participants who applied after June 12, 2025. <br><br><b>Program as Intended</b>The
R3 Academy for Dads workshop includes a combination of three curricula: Raising World Class Kids, Parenting in the
Digital Age, Achieving Your Job Potential, and Making Money Work. There were Spanish-speaking and English-speaking
workshops offered in each mode. Below we describe the workshops by modality.
The explanation is divided so that it explains the live and livestream
workshops separate from on-demand workshops. This was because there were small
but notable differences in the workshop delivery schedule, recording of
attendance, the availability of make-up sessions and session 1 attendance
requirements. 

 

<br><b>Live and Livestream Modes</b>Fathers in live workshops attended their series in one of 16 physical
locations across California. Sessions were held at a set time during the week,
usually Monday through Saturday. Livestream fathers also attended their
workshop at a set time but attended remotely via Zoom. Fathers in both
modalities attended their workshops in a group setting with one or two trained
instructors. In the case of the livestream workshop, a host was present to help
with technical difficulties and take attendance. Hosts were also trained
instructors, so if the primary instructor had any technical issues or was for
some reason unable to attend on short notice, the host could facilitate the
workshop. Typically, these workshops were conducted in 2-hour sessions over the
course of 12 weeks for a total of 24 hours. However, live workshops also
offered an option to attend 4-hour sessions once a week for 6 weeks. This was
not offered to the livestream cohort due to concerns about screen burnout.<br><b><br></b> Fathers in live workshops attended their series in one of 16 physical
locations across California. Sessions were held at a set time during the week,
usually Monday through Saturday. Livestream fathers also attended their
workshop at a set time but attended remotely via Zoom. Fathers in both
modalities attended their workshops in a group setting with one or two trained
instructors. In the case of the livestream workshop, a host was present to help
with technical difficulties and take attendance. Hosts were also trained
instructors, so if the primary instructor had any technical issues or was for
some reason unable to attend on short notice, the host could facilitate the
workshop. Typically, these workshops were conducted in 2-hour sessions over the
course of 12 weeks for a total of 24 hours. However, live workshops also
offered an option to attend 4-hour sessions once a week for 6 weeks. This was
not offered to the livestream cohort due to concerns about screen burnout.

<br><b>Attendance</b>To reach 90% attendance,
fathers had to attend at least 22 of the 24 total workshop hours. Thus, fathers
in a 12-week workshop had to attend or make up at least 11 of 12 sessions.
Fathers attending the 6-week workshop had to attend or make up at least 5.5 of
the 6 workshops to be considered as attending with 90% attendance. To promote
session attendance, any fathers who completed at least 90% of the program were
offered an incentive. <br>

<b>Make-up
sessions</b>Fathers were allowed to make up two workshop sessions. Make-ups for both modes
were conducted using recorded Zoom sessions. A link, which expired after 7
days, was sent to each individual participant who did not attend the workshop
and had not previously completed watching two make-up sessions. Individual
participants had to watch the entire make-up session video to be considered as
having completed their missed session.  <br>

<b>Session 1
attendance requirements</b> For the first half of evaluation data collection fathers
were expected to attend the first session of their workshop or they were
removed from that cohort. If this happened, they were immediately contacted by
the HRC staff to offer them a new cohort. This changed in June 2024 so that
fathers were left in their chosen session series unless they specifically
requested to be removed, or the series ended. 

 

<br><b>On-Demand Mode </b>The on-demand workshop sessions were accessed via the Learning Management
System. The pre-recorded sessions were taught by one or two instructors with no
live interactions between the fathers and the instructors. Due to the absence
of a live instructor and the group setting, individual sessions for on-demand
workshops were often shorter in length than the live and livestream workshop
sessions (see Appendix C for a detailed list of individual session length). The
skills taught and information shared remained the same and were presented to
fathers in the same order as in the live and livestream workshops. Five to
fifteen minute timers were also embedded in the videos to encourage fathers to
take time to complete workshop activities and practice new skills. Also, to
encourage continuous attention to the videos, the sessions were broken down
into segments and the fathers had to manually click a button to take them to
the next video segment. <br>

<b>Attendance</b>Fathers who watched at least
90% of any given session were counted as attended for that session. Conversely,
if the participant watched 89% or less of the session they were marked as not
attending.

<br><b>Make-up
sessions</b>On-demand
fathers were not given the option to make-up sessions which meant that they had
to watch 90% of at least 11 sessions to receive their 90% attendance
incentives. The reason on-demand fathers were not given the option to make-up
the session was because they had two weeks to complete each session. Because
they have 2 weeks to complete each session, fathers could complete the program
in 13 weeks instead of 12. <br>

<b>Session 1
attendance requirements</b> On-demand fathers only had one week to initiate session 1 of
their workshop. If the fathers did not initiate within one week of their start
date the fathers were dropped from the cohort and offered an upcoming series.
If the fathers did watch past the introduction video they were locked into
their series even if they watched less than 90% of session 1. <br><br><b>Program Incentives</b><br>Incentives
included workshop-branded merchandise, supplemental courses, and three monetary
incentives. Merchandise, such as R3 Academy branded polos and bracelets, was
given to all participants who attended the Cal-FIRE workshops. A supplemental, World Class Relationships for Work and Home,
was free to fathers who completed 90%
of the R3 Academy’s primary workshop hours. Participants who achieved 90%
completion were also eligible to receive a $50 merchant gift card. Participants
who completed the Entrance and Exit surveys, regardless of program attendance,
received a $25 merchant gift card. Finally, participants who completed the
Follow-up survey, regardless of program attendance, received a $25 merchant
gift card. Participants were required to have completed the Exit Survey to be
offered the Follow-up survey. For participants who applied after June 12, 2025
and were not offered the Follow-up survey, participants were given the
opportunity to provide program feedback in order to receive the $25 gift card
that would have been attached to the Follow-up survey. <b></b>