A Guide to Evaluating Marine and Family Division Programs, Services, and Capabilities

For Marine and Family Division (MF) programs and services to remain meaningful, credible, and practical, their effectiveness must be able to be demonstrated. Assessing their offerings will help the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) to surge and contract the portfolio as resources wax and wane. This program evaluation toolkit is designed to help those responsible for implementing MF programs to determine whether those programs are effective — achieving their intended goals — and ultimately to guide efficient use of scarce resources. This toolkit is composed of two interrelated documents: this User's Guide and a set of Microsoft Excel workbooks that correspond to material presented in the User's Guide about collecting and analyzing data. This toolkit is based on the program evaluation literature and program evaluation toolkits produced by other RAND researchers. A review of relevant Marine Corps Orders; discussions with headquarters, branch, and program staff in MF; and reviews of publicly available websites provided additional background for the specific context of MF, USMC. The contents of this toolkit should be of particular interest to MF and staff in the five branches within the scope of this study: Behavioral Health, Family Care, Family Readiness, Personal and Professional Development, and Semper Fit. It may also be of interest to those who manage or oversee similar programs that provide support to service members and their families.