abstract: 'New Hope (NH) was a successful poverty reduction program that offered a

  positive social contract to working-poor adults. If you worked full

  time, you were eligible to receive income supplements, childcare

  vouchers, health care benefits, a community service job, and client

  respect. NH did reduce poverty and increase income and earnings for some

  participants, and improved outcomes for some children. But in spite of

  relatively generous benefits, NH was only selectively effective. Only

  those not working when NH began and those with few barriers to work were

  positively affected by the program through achieving more work hours,

  poverty reduction, and income gains. Boys in program families benefited,

  girls did not. Take-up of NH benefits was typically partial and

  episodic; for instance, some parents would not use childcare programs

  for young children. Ethnographic evidence was essential for

  understanding these sometimes-surprising program impacts and their

  policy and practice implications, and was effectively combined with an

  experimental, random-assignment research design. Psychological

  anthropology can bring its traditions of integrating qualitative and

  quantitative methods and its focus on experience, context, and meaning

  to understanding and improving policies and practices within a

  scientific frame of the committed, fair witness. {[}mixed methods,

  policy and practice, family, poverty, adolescence]'
affiliation: 'Weisner, TS (Corresponding Author), Univ Calif Los Angeles, Dept Psychiat,
  Semel Inst, Ctr Culture \& Hlth, Los Angeles, CA 90024 USA.

  Weisner, Thomas S., Univ Calif Los Angeles, Dept Psychiat, Semel Inst, Ctr Culture
  \& Hlth, Los Angeles, CA 90024 USA.

  Weisner, Thomas S., Univ Calif Los Angeles, Dept Anthropol, Los Angeles, CA USA.'
author: Weisner, Thomas S.
author_list:
- family: Weisner
  given: Thomas S.
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.1111/j.1548-1352.2011.01208.x
eissn: 1548-1352
files: []
issn: 0091-2131
journal: ETHOS
keywords: mixed methods; policy and practice; family; poverty; adolescence
keywords-plus: CHILDREN; INTERVENTION; POVERTY; IMPACTS; PROMOTE
language: English
month: DEC
number: 4, SI
number-of-cited-references: '54'
pages: 455-476
papis_id: b4e5dafffd02f1c14e63483984117b91
ref: Weisner2011ifyou
times-cited: '6'
title: '``If You Work in This Country You Should Not be Poor, and Your Kids Should
  be Doing Better″: Bringing Mixed Methods and Theory in Psychological Anthropology
  to Improve Research in Policy and Practice'
type: Article
unique-id: WOS:000297414400014
usage-count-last-180-days: '0'
usage-count-since-2013: '12'
volume: '39'
web-of-science-categories: Anthropology; Psychology, Multidisciplinary
year: '2011'