Building a Convincing Test of a Public Housing Employment Program Using Non-Experimental Methods: Planning for the Jobs-Plus Demonstration. MDRC Working Papers on Research Methodology

摘要

This paper examines issues and options for the design of a major non-experimental study to measure the impacts of a large-scale, saturation-level demonstration program to promote employment among residents of selected public housing developments. The program, Jobs-Plus, is being launched by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and The Rockefeller Foundation. (An updated, full list of the Jobs-Plus funding partners is provided at the front of this paper.) Because Jobs-Plus will be a comprehensive community initiative, available to all residents of the several public housing developments where it is implemented, the program cannot be evaluated using a randomized experiment, the now-standard method for measuring the impacts of employment and training programs. However, because community-wide initiatives are becoming an increasingly important component of social policy, it is essential to develop methods for determining their success. It is the purpose of this paper, therefore, to explore possibilities for doing so.