Although some questions from previous parent interviews will be repeated, the next interview will also include questions concerning the effects of welfare reform on parents' and children. The team is also beginning to analyze the data for the kindergarten cohort, which is the only grade that all children in the sample have completed. Jennifer Greene, a leader in the field of mixed-methods became a member of the team and is helping develop innovative strategies for integrating the quantitative and qualitative data. The ethnographers will continue to interview case study families, and plan to follow children through their school day and after-school activities. For more information, see the 1997 Project Summary page .
New Hope is a community-based initiative operating in two neighborhoods in Milwaukee.
As such, it represents a work-based alternative to welfare and a new way in which to address the income needs of the working poor. Eligibility for the program is restricted to households in the two neighbor-hoods with income below 150 percent of the poverty line and that includes an adult who is willing to work full time. For more information, see the 1997 Project Summary page . Network members Catherine Cooper and Barrie Thorne, in consultation with Hanne Haavind, and assisted by two post-doctoral researchers and several graduate students, are using a comparative case study approach to explore this question in three communities in California that vary in social class and ethnic composition and in processes of racialization and histories of immigration. For more information, see the 1997 Project Summary page .