One Step at a Time: Participant Perspectives on Career Pathways

This is the first brief in the HPOG 2.0 Participant Perspectives series, funded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE). HPOG 2.0 funded local career pathways programs to prepare participants for occupations in the healthcare field that paid well and were expected to either experience labor shortages or be in high demand.

Many studies of career pathways programs are ongoing, but firsthand accounts of participants’ experiences are limited. This brief shares insights from such firsthand accounts and thereby adds to our understanding of participant experiences in career pathways programs.

Findings from the in-depth interviews included in this report include:

• Interviewees frequently focused on taking the immediate next step in their career pathway; many also had a clear sense of their long-term career ambitions.
• Interviewees thinking about a next step on their career pathway faced a complex set of logistical and financial considerations and moved forward in ways that accommodated those considerations.
• Interviewees persisted in their training for a variety of reasons, including to be a role model for their children, to earn more money, and to gain greater job satisfaction.
• Increased self-confidence from completing one training influenced interviewees’ self-reported interest in completing a subsequent training.
• Guides—including interviewees’ HPOG case managers, instructors, and healthcare industry colleagues—offered advice about and examples of career pathways that influenced how interviewees navigated their career pathway.

This brief reports themes from in-depth, in-person interviews conducted between October 2019 and January 2020. The sample includes 153 program participants across 14 local HPOG 2.0 programs.

Participation in the interviews was voluntary. Interviews were semi-structured and usually lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. The conversational interviews covered a common set of topics: career pathways; employment and education histories; experience of the HPOG 2.0 training; managing work, family, and training; and finances. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using qualitative software.

For this brief we supplemented the interview data with information collected for the implementation study associated with the broader HPOG 2.0 National Evaluation.

Thomas, Hannah. 2022. One Step at a Time: Participant Perspectives on Career Pathways, OPRE Report 2022-48. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.