The overarching goal of this project is to facilitate full citizenship rights for women and children with disabilities in Bangladesh and Nepal

This research looked at longitudinal data about adult memories of abuse-related traumas from childhood. Findings from this project can be used to design interventions for and promote the health and well-being of victims of childhood sexual abuse and violence.

The primary objective of this project is to manage the continuation of the well established Afterschool Matters Initiative, which includes several publications and a Research Grantee program, in addition to planning for the national expansion of a related action/research writing initiative.

This project is an in-depth qualitative investigation of teen/parent communication about sex and relationships, which provides an in-depth look at families participating in the evaluation of middle school education program. It includes interviews with 32 teen/parent pairs who are participants in the Get Real middle school sex education program.

This study will test the Afterschool Program Practices Tool's (APT) stability and accuracy as a measure of afterschool program quality.

This statewide project combines human rights fact-finding, qualitative research, advocacy, and community organizing to document and address the injustices inflicted on battered mothers and their children during family court child custody and visitation litigation.

The Work, Families & Children team has conducted a series of studies for the Boston Public Schools (BPS), including the BPS K1 and K2 Programs Needs Assessment, and a 2007-08 follow-up study.

Using a randomized control design, Michelle Porche will conduct an evaluation of the Boston Ready professional development intervention to test its effectiveness.

Researchers gathered economists, policy-makers, and funders to develop several recommendations for building a skilled and stable workforce for After School Programs.

Ongoing since 2013
Out-of-school-time
NIOST will provide expertise on OST field-building, research support, and technical assistance delivery of the HOST Campaign.

WCW researchers participated in a study, led by Dr. Valora Washington and under the auspices of the Bessie Tartt Wilson Children’s Foundation, to evaluate the child care voucher system in Massachusetts.

The CLLIP Research and Evaluation Project is designed to assess the impact of a literacy intervention for low-income poor performing school districts in the state of Ohio. Longitudinal data consisting of standardized literacy assessments, and surveys from students (preschool through 6th grade), parents, and teachers are analyzed and evaluated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the CLLIP intervention.

The project involves a needs assessment of child and adolescent refugee mental health services in New Hampshire and utilizes community dialogue strategies for integrating youth, family, provider, school and community knowledge and expertise towards addressing refugee mental health needs especially as it relates to trauma and in the context of resettlement.

Through this project we will develop and pilot-test a new family court advocacy training curriculum for service providers who work with battered immigrant and minority women.  This project is intended to directly affect the lives of battered immigrant women by empowering them with substantive, strategic knowledge.

This project connected high-level leaders from different cities and states to educate them on the dynamic landscape of after-school programs. in hopes of directing the influence, funding, and high expectations of these leaders towards a "critical mass" of associated initiatives across the country.

The goal of this study is to increase the capacity of schools to prevent Dating Violence/Harassment (DV/H) by evaluating the effectiveness of current multi-level DV/H prevention programming in middle schools within a large urban school district.

The goal of this project is to produce a reliable and valid measure of teachers’ educational beliefs and knowledge of child development and ECE pedagogy that can be used to validate the effectiveness of professional development programs and interventions, as well as, to provide valuable feedback in applied setting s regarding  ECE teachers’ professional development needs and classroom appropriateness.

This study is designed to help increase the capacity of programs to prevent sexual violence and harassment. The long-term goal/objective of this study is to help prevent intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and sexual harassment by employing the most rigorous methods to evaluate strategies for altering the violence-supportive attitudes and norms of youth.

A project to track economic effects of education.

This project proposes to advance scientific knowledge regarding the relationship between health and work, and both the positive and negative conditions within a workplace.  This study asks how important employment really is toward productivity and health in an older workers' life.

  This project examined the gendered nature of Korean transnational corporations, highlighting the ways in which features of the workplace shape individual and communal identity.

This study followed a random sample of hundreds of children and 100 child care centers in order to examine links between family income, the quality and cost of child-care, and infant language and social development.

The project combines out-of-school time (OST) professional advisors, the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST), and NASA experts from across the agency to use research-based strategies to develop afterschool activity guides adapted from NASA Planetary Science formal education curricula.

  Firms across the globe that engage in international production and manufacturing employ many women. This research outlined various risks and perceived benefits associated for female employees.

This project seeks to promote healthy and productive connections between men and women, girls and boys, and within families, organizations, and society.

This study examines the influence of gender, adversity, and social learning on the development of drug and alcohol-use patterns in a sample of adolescents.

  This teaching guide was developed after scholars attended the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and includes discussion of human rights, ethnic conflict, and biodiversity.

This project prepared a report to describe the prevalent health practices and concerns in early care and education programs in Massachusetts, as part of a larger project of the Schott Fellowship in Early Care and Education.

This project will examine the role of firms in shaping high-skilled immigration to the United States. In particular, we exploit the combined employer - employee data of the most prominent US high tech firms to evaluate the extent to which foreign born science and engineering workers are employed, and how the work force composition is affected by the inflows of immigrant scientists. This research is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

A collaboration with the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance and numerous shelters in Boston, this study involves surveying and interviewing homeless women with respect to their experience of childhood trauma and intimate partner violence. 

The aim of this three-year initiative is to expand the influence of the National SEED Project on Inclusive Curriculum (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity), to make its model of schooling inclusiveness for all children and families, including its innovative professional development practices, more widely known and available to educators in the United States.

This study examines the varying quality of child care in Massachusetts and across the nation, and its effect on children's performance and family functioning.

The workshops, courses, trainings, and publications at the Institute utilize the Relational-Cultural Model of development, which focuses on 'growth-fostering relationships' as central to positive human development.

This study examined the ways in which physical and/or sexual violence within a family affects the individual, the family unit, and the community. The project focused on prevention programs and policies in order to better understand the varied outcomes of family violence.

This project sought to identify the most successful elements of afterschool programs in Massachusetts; including staff, policy making, funding, and program/activity participation.

The goal of the Massachusetts Cost and Quality Study was to examine full-day, year-round, community-based center care for preschool-age children (2.9 years to 5 years) and for infants and toddlers, pre-k classrooms in the public schools and family child care programs.

This group of inter-related research projects seeks to understand the state of early care and education in Massachusetts and make recommendations for quality outcomes.

The purpose of this online nationwide survey study is to understand how different types of media (i.e. social, technological, televised) impact young people’s sense of social identities, including racial/ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, political attitudes, and civic engagement.

This was an evaluation of a national project that fosters more positive attitudes and stronger affiliations among middle school teachers, students, and parents within school communities.

This study seeks to emphasize connection between mothers and sons by defining stages in development and countering the pressures faced in each one.

The Centers for Disease Control established this consortium of WCW, the Medical University of South Carolina, and the University of Missouri. 

This study examined the ways in which youth participate in the League: how do they experience the democratic ideals of a debate program? How do they come to consider and participate in democracy?

This study, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, seeks to determine the relationship between children's early experiences and their developmental outcomes.

NIOST will evaluate a new online learning program

This research and evaluation study examines process outcomes and program impact for a Kindergarten to Grade 5 implementation project in 23 elementary schools within a large urban school district. 

Implementation and dissemination of physical activity program for out-of-school time

The FasTracKids Research Study is a 19-month international study aimed at examining the link between participation in FasTracKids enrichment programs and child outcomes (children 4 and 5 years old). FasTracKids Enrichment Centers offer a variety of classes and activities designed to promote early learning, develop creative thinking and problem solving, build verbal communication, promote leadership and personal growth, and encourage a lifelong love of learning.

This program examined the ways urban high school students benefit from and utilize school-to-work programs, with an exploration of class differences on work relationships and overall experience.

This project will focus on the BOKS program, which aims to improve kids' academic performance and overall health using physical activity to jump start children's brains in the morning.

The research teamwill examine the long-term effects of an earlier intervention on preventing depression during the critical developmental transition to young adulthood.

This research study uses quantitative and qualitative data collection methods and multiple regression modeling to examine healthy eating and physical activity opportunities in a national sample of out-of-school time programs. 

The goal of this collaborative project is to invite public discourse about overcoming barriers to educational equity for girls of color in order to affect educational policy and practice. The specific goal of the project was to create a multi-media strategy in two phases in order to stimulate conversation almongst multiple constituencies.
 

This project in collaboration with UNICEF addresses, through research and analysis, the way in which women's and children's rights intersect with legislative reform.

  This roundtable to be held in Rabat, Morocco in spring 2011 brings together women advocates and law and policy makers who are working to advance the rights and status of women in the Muslim community. 

Charmaraman will interview a subset of 30 participants from the larger online survey study of over 1,300 young people aged 12 – 25 from the U.S. and abroad.

This three-year evaluation project was designed to measure the outcome of SCOPE, an inquiry-based science enrichment program for upper-elementary and middle-school aged girls.

This project created a collaborative intervention model and curriculum for schools and community-based organizations in order to understand and counter rising rates of rape, sexual harassment, and gender discrimination in school environments.

This project aims to explicate the relation between parental depression, parenting styles, parent/child relationships, sibling relationship quality and internalizing and externalizing outcomes in children.

This study sought to clarify the links and benefits between sports and high-risk sexual behavior among high-school girls.

The purpose of this project is to inform the Massachusetts board of Early Education and Care (EEC) of the resources that will best serve families and communities in supporting the holistic development of children, youth, and families.

While girls do well in science and math courses in middle school, they are less likely to enroll in higher-level STEM courses in high school, thus few will choose these subjects for a college major, and even fewer will complete such a major or go on to pursue a STEM career. The increased knowledge generated by this study will inform ways to increase the participation of girls and other under-represented groups (e.g., racial and ethnic minorities, low-income youth) in sustained STEM study and employment.

NIOST will assist with the implementation of a new afterschool program.

Conclusions from this five-year project focused on relationships between personal ethnic identification and television consumption, as well as levels of sexual content in varying shows.

This project will evaluate how much high school seniors know about the labor market impacts related to their study choices and how additional information affects their application process and choices among alternative study places. The project combines experimental and interview data from Finland with the extensive register records related to higher education applications and choices. The experimental phase of the project was completed during fall 2011 in almost 60 randomly selected high-schools, and the second phase of the study will be implemented during summer and fall 2012. This project is funded by the Network of Higher Education and Innovation Research (HEINE) at the University of Helsinki.

This project will create a Massachusetts Women's Justice Network and develop a model program for women at risk of involvement in the criminal justice system.

This project tracked data and policies affecting women's economic status in Massachusetts.

The Wellesley Centers for Women will develop appropriate assessments, collaborate with the Office for Institutional Research and team members to collect date, conduct data analyses, prepare reports, and provide feedback from the evaluation to Science Center and College representatives.

This long-term project was designed to assess gender equity educational materials which were created in relation to the development of Title IX.

Battered women of color often report that they do not receive fair treatment in family courts and that the courts’ insufficiencies can lead to devastating consequences for them and for their children.

This project studied the impact of an undergraduate program that enables female college students to earn a minor in women's studies through comprehensive examination of gender roles and relationships and through mentorships.

This project was an evaluation of a program that looked at the ways in which low income women benefit or suffer from various approaches to community and leadership development.

This was an evaluation of a program that aimed to increase the number of middle school girls interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

This project examined the experiences of women leaders in varying fields, in order to teach other women how to advance in similar ways and overcome barriers.

Since 1983 the Women's Review of Books has provided a forum for serious, informed discussion of new writing by and about women. Women’s Review of Books provides a unique perspective on today’s literary landscape and feature essays and in-depth reviews of new books by and about women. Women's Review of Books is published by the Wellesley Centers for Women in collaboration with Old City Publishing in Philadelphia, PA.

 Through this project, a network of women leaders in countries where either Islam is a state religion, or has a large community that is governed by religious laws including Islamic laws, has been convened to build a body of scholarship that can be a platform for advocacy and sharing of strategies on emerging issues that bolster women's political, public and business participation.

Ongoing since 1985
Study of working conditions and impact on health

Working Conditions and Health is a group of inter-related research projects with a common interest in understanding the relation of working conditions to the physical and mental health of workers.

The Career Pathways Project will lead to a set of guidelines promoting success and strengthening the work force for afterschool providers towards stability preparation, support and commitment to the well-being and empowerment of youth.