Koh 2008a.

Methods	Matched comparison on child age, race, disability, gender, reason for removal, year of entry, locality of services, parent age and marital status, caregiver age and marital status, match of child and caregiver race
Participants	Kinship n = 16,831 Foster n = 16,831 National sample drawn from AFCARS data in Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, and Tennessee from March 2000 to September 2005
Interventions	See Table 2
Outcomes	Placement Stability ‐ Number of Placemetns; Length of Stay (OOH); Placement Disruption; Reentry Permanency ‐ Reunification; Adoption; Guardianship
Notes
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Low risk	Attempt was made to equate the kinship care and foster care groups through matching; Evidence on placement characteristics and child demographics were reported on the comparability of the groups
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Kinship care and foster care groups did not experience different exposure to the intervention; Unclear if groups received different services during placement
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Unclear if kinship care and foster care groups were defined in same way; There was no evidence of biased assessment resulting from the type of placement
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	All participants were accounted for in the reporting of results; Attrition could not have influenced the results
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	Instrumentation used to measure the outcomes was specified completely; Reliability and/or validity information was reported for instrumentation