Rebekah Selekman

Rebekah Selekman studies family support programs and policies. Her research focuses on implementation science and administrative data analysis for programs designed to improve relationship, economic, and emotional well-being outcomes. She also provides evaluation technical assistance for rigorous evaluations.

Selekman currently co-leads a study on child support enforcement tools and collections in which she analyzes state policies and interviews state administrators on the use and effectiveness of various enforcement tools. For the Exploring Measurement of Performance Outcomes and Work Requirements in Programs Promoting Economic Independence project, she led efforts to collect information on child support cooperation requirements from local- and federal-level stakeholders to understand how these requirements are operationalized and how they contribute to overall child support and economic well-being outcomes for low-income families. She has contributed to the design of implementation studies for a number of family support projects by selecting implementation study sites, developing interview protocols, and conducting interviews. Selekman also provides expertise on the use of program administrative data to support implementation studies, including through analysis of administrative data for Promoting Readiness of Minors in SSI, Parents and Children Together, Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services, and the Child Support Parental Employment Demonstration. She has also worked on a number of projects aimed at reducing teen pregnancy, including Evaluation Training and Technical Assistance in Program Evaluation for Teen Pregnancy Prevention grantees and the Federal Evaluation of Selected Programs for Expectant and Parenting Youth.

Selekman contributes to the research community by serving on the National Child Support Enforcement Association’s subcommittee on child support research. She has published articles in peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Policy Practice and Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership, and Governance. She has had work presented at the Society for Research on Adolescence and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Conference. She received her Ph.D. in social welfare from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.