Young Parents Demonstration Grant Net Impact Study
Monitoring Random Assignment of Young Parents Demonstration
SPONSORING AGENCY: U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
PROJECT OFFICER: Savi Swick
PERFORMANCE PERIOD: June 2010 – June 2012
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PROJECT SUMMARY:
The Young Parents Demonstration (YPD) Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (DOL/ETA) to test innovative strategies that can improve the skills and education of young parents and, ultimately their employment and earnings. The YPD initiative is designed to provide educational and occupational skills training that fosters family economic self-sufficiency to young parents (both mothers and fathers) and expectant parents 16 to 24 years of age. The YPD projects serve young parents including, as applicable, those in high-risk categories such as victims of child abuse, children of incarcerated parents, court-involved youth, youth at risk of court involvement, homeless and runaway youth, Native American youth, migrant youth, youth in or aging out of foster care, and youth with disabilities. The YPD program grantees are required to develop a “bump-up” intervention that provides an additional level above and beyond the existing level of services specifically intended to increase an individual’s education, job training and employment. With a 50/50 chance of being in either group, individuals enrolling in the program are randomly assigned to treatment (bump-up) and control groups. Those individuals assigned to the treatment, or “bump-up,” group receive the additional services, while individuals assigned to the control group receive the existing services offered by the grantee. A key factor in the bump-up design is having a single, persistent intervention for the treatment group that is substantially different from what the control group receives. Each of the grantees is implementing one of the following bump-up interventions: (1) professional staff mentoring/navigation or (2) occupation-specific training.
Under this task order, Capital Research Corporation – and subcontractors, The Urban Institute and Abt Associates, is responsible for maintaining the study’s automated participant tracking system (PTS) and monitoring of random assignment of youth participants into treatment and group groups. The goal of this technical assistance is to ensure that random assignment is implemented to fidelity at the time services begin and to maintain reliability throughout the grant period. Under this task order, the research team is responsible for maintaining the PTS and making the system available and fully functional to all YPD sites over the Internet. The team of researchers is responsible for making programming changes as needed to assure the PTS meets the needs of YPD sites, the evaluation effort, and DOL/ETA requirements. During regular monitoring calls with each of the YPD sites, the CRC team inquires about the functioning of the PTS and, as needed and requested by YPD sites and DOL/ETA, makes adjustments/refinements to the PTS. The Capital Research Corporation research team also regularly monitors each YPD site’s random assignment procedures (i.e., to ensure random assignment of participants into the treatment/control groups), enrollment levels, and ongoing data collection/entry into the YPD through regular telephone calls to each YPD site and ongoing quality control reviews of data entered into the PTS.