Enhancing the validity of foster care follow-up studies through multiple alumni location strategies.

While family-based placement prevention services, family reunification programs, subsidized guardianship, and aggressive adoption programs are reducing the numbers of children spending long periods of time in substitute care, a significant number of America's children will come of age in foster care. Agencies and policymakers should use research and evaluation to assess the effectiveness of foster care in nurturing healthy adults and to explore ways to improve services. Outcome studies that have focused on locating and interviewing young or middle-aged adults emancipated from foster care have been hampered by modest response rates, limiting the field's ability to evaluate the efficacy of foster care programs. This article describes a set of strategies that were used to achieve higher response rates in two recent follow-up studies.