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EMPLOYMENT RETENTION AND ADVANCEMENT PROJECT (ERA)
Purpose
The Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) evaluation is a comprehensive effort to learn about effective strategies, including pre- and post-employment strategies for job retention and career advancement, employer initiatives, and other services to promote employment retention and advancement, among current and former welfare recipients and other low-wage workers. The design of ERA ensures that outcomes such as an increase in employment rates, employment stability, wage progression, family income, and other outcomes are realized as a result of the ERA programs.
The evaluation is designed to answer the following questions:
- What approaches are shown to be effective in improving job retention and advancement among current and former TANF recipients and other low-income people? To what extent do the programs improve employment retention, advancement, and other outcomes for participants and their children?
- What services are provided, how are they delivered, who receives them, and why? What problems are encountered when implementing the programs and how are they addressed?
- To what extent do the programs improve employment retention, advancement, and other key outcomes for participants and their children? Looking across programs, which approaches are most effective, and for whom?
- What are the costs of the programs? To what extent do their benefits outweigh their costs from the perspectives of program participants, taxpayers, employers, and society overall? How do these findings vary by type of program and participant characteristics?
For more information:
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2002, February). New strategies to promote stable employment and career progression: An introduction to the Employment Retention and Advancement Project. Washington, DC: Author. Available at http://www.mdrc.org/Reports2002/era_conferencerpt/era_2000_2001.pdf
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/index.html
Agencies/Institutions
The ERA is funded by the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and by the U.S. Department of Labor. MDRC conducts the evaluation with technical assistance from the Lewin Group.
Research/Survey Design
The ERA has had three phases, one of which occurred before the formal evaluation began:
- Thirteen planning grants were awarded to states to work with a Federal technical assistance contractor (The Lewin Group) to develop retention and advancement programs.
- Once the evaluation contractor was chosen, implementation grants were awarded to states either deemed ready to fully implement and test their initiatives as part of a national evaluation or to states in earlier stages to allow them to continue development of an ERA project.
- A national, multi-site evaluation of selected program models analyzing program implementation and assessing program effectiveness in improving job retention and advancement among TANF recipients and other low-income workers.
The 15 ERA projects can be grouped according to their primary emphasis:
- Six advancement projects focus on strategies for promoting training and education to help low-income workers move to better jobs.
- Four placement and retention projects are primarily concerned with helping hard-to-employ workers find and keep jobs.
- Five projects with mixed goals focus on job placement, retention, and advancement—in that order—for welfare recipients looking for jobs.
The national evaluation uses a rigorous research design to analyze the process and implementation (e.g., operation of programs and the challenges they encounter), impact (e.g., extent to which the programs improve retention, advancement, and other outcomes), and cost-benefit of each program. In each site, individuals are randomly assigned to the treatment group (i.e., ERA programs) or the control group (i.e., services that do not include ERA programs) except in Cleveland, Ohio, where employers are assigned randomly.
The evaluation draws on administrative (e.g., TANF, food stamps, UI earnings) and fiscal records, surveys of participants (e.g., employment, income, service receipt, and family and child well-being), and field visits to the sites (e.g., observation, discussions, program documents, and case file reviews). Prior to studying any site, MDRC and the Lewin Group offer technical assistance to the site to develop and pilot test its demonstration projects and to develop random assignment and data collection procedures. Following random assignment, MDRC assesses the early implementation of the program to help the site refine and strengthen it.
For more information:
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2002, February). New strategies to promote stable employment and career progression: An introduction to the Employment Retention and Advancement Project. Washington, DC: Author. Available at http://www.mdrc.org/Reports2002/era_conferencerpt/era_2000_2001.pdf
http://www.mdrc.org/
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/index.html
Date(s)/Periodicity
The evaluation will last for 8 years. It began in September 1999 and is scheduled to conclude in September 2007. Site development occurred from fall 1999 through winter 2003. Pilot assessments occurred from spring 2001 through 2003. Technical assistance and feedback have been ongoing through 2003. Random assignment and the collection of baseline data have been staggered, with the first sites starting in mid 2001 and the last site projected to conclude random assignment in March 2005. Post-random-assignment assessments occurred in 2002 and 2003. Implementation research will occur in 2002 through 2005. A 12-month survey in the field will occur during 2003 and 2005. The 36-month survey will begin in late 2005.
Population/Sample
Fifteen ERA programs are being implemented across eight states:
- California: Los Angeles County (two sites) and Riverside County (two sites)
- Illinois
- Minnesota
- New York: New York City
- Ohio
- Oregon: Medford, Eugene, and Salem
- South Carolina
- Texas: Corpus Christi, Houston, Ft. Worth
A majority of the ERA projects are in urban areas, and most are relatively large and enroll approximately 1,000 to 2,000 people during a 1- to 2-year period. The final expected sample size is more than 40,000 individuals. All programs target low-income individuals, especially current and former recipients of TANF.
For more information:
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2002, February). New strategies to promote stable employment and career progression: An introduction to the Employment Retention and Advancement Project. Washington, DC: Author. Available at http://www.mdrc.org/Reports2002/era_conferencerpt/era_2000_2001.pdf
http://www.mdrc.org/
Content Covered
The ERA 12-month survey covers a number of areas: participation in employment-related and education activities, educational attainment, employment history, barriers to employment, program message and experiences of program, marital status, household size, and child care, transportation, health coverage, household income, health status, and an additional module for the “hard to employ” on physical and emotional health.
Availability of Data for Public Use
Data for public use is not yet available.
Reference List for Users’ Guide, Codebooks, Methodology Report(s)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2002, February). New strategies to promote stable employment and career progression: An introduction to the Employment Retention and Advancement Project. Washington, DC: Author.
Reports about early impacts are expected beginning in mid 2004. The implementation and preliminary impacts are for an early cohort of enrollees for each site. ERA programs will be covered in separate interim reports in 2005 - 2006. Reports that explore specific topics from a cross-program perspective will be released periodically. A final report including impacts and cost-benefits is expected in 2007.
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