Resource Library

There is growing emphasis placed on evidence-based interventions, and opportunities to make programmatic decisions based on evidence reflect progress in promoting positive outcomes. However, some populations (e.g., ethnic and cultural minority communities, marginalized groups) may be left behind in efforts to build evidence, if they are more difficult to study. Over time, as evidence builds for the populations...

Explore findings and recommendations for career pathways program providers considering the use of program data to predict participant success outcomes.

Explore how TANF funding provided housing assistance during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Explore this resource toolbox, which highlights selected resources and tools that are particularly relevant for current and future Tribal TANF-Child Welfare Coordination (TTCW) grantees, and that may also be relevant for other human services programs.

This OPRE brief considers the extent to which TANF agencies across the country are using TANF funds to serve and support families experiencing or at-risk of homelessness.

The Learn, Innovate, Improve (or LI2) process is a way for human services leaders to intentionally launch and systematically guide program change and to incorporate evidence and research methods into such efforts. This practice brief provides an overview of the second phase of LI2—the Innovate phase—which is intended to help...

Evidence on the services and combinations of services that improve labor market outcomes.

Running from 2015 to 2021, the second round of the Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF’s) Health Profession Opportunity Grants Program (“HPOG 2.0”) funded grantees to provide support services and healthcare occupational training according to career pathways principles.  ACF’s Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) is administering a robust evaluation of the HPOG 2.0 effort: the National and Tribal Evaluation of the 2nd Generation of Health Profession Opportunity Grants.  The National Evaluation of 27 non-Tribal grantees is comparing outcomes and impacts for program applicants randomly assigned access to the grantees’ HPOG 2.0 programs (treatment group) versus those randomly assigned access only to services available elsewhere in the community (control group).

In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, disrupting American lives, labor markets, and local HPOG 2.0 programs.  To better understand how COVID changed outcomes and impacts for HPOG 2.0 study members relative to the pre-COVID period, OPRE contracted with Abt Associates to conduct the HPOG 2.0 National Evaluation COVID-Cohort Study.

This Analysis Plan describes the methodology for answering the study’s key research questions.  The document also improves the transparency and replicability of study findings by committing the research team to make consequential decisions prior to inspecting estimates of program impacts.  Most methods and operationalizations of outcomes measures continue from earlier HPOG 2.0 impact analyses and are described in previous Analysis Plans.  This Analysis Plan therefore primarily focuses on specifying analytic methods and presentation strategies specific to this study’s understanding of how COVID shifted the HPOG 2.0 program.

This brief provides guidance for employment service providers and other human services agency staff who wish to implement evidence-based programs but find little information about the core components of those programs.

This brief highlights the study’s findings related to TANF programs in rural contexts, drawing on our analysis of TANF administrative data and secondary survey sources alongside interviews with human service providers across rural communities.