Labor Topics

• Measuring Program Performance
• Finding Out What Works
• Using Vouchers to Deliver Services
• Helping Service Members
• Self-Employment as an Alternative Strategy
• Moving Young People into Productive Careers
• Encouraging Employment for Ex-Offenders
• Addressing Unique Problems of Experienced Workers
• Assisting DOL and Grantees
• Clients

Evaluating the YouthBuild Program: Helping High School Dropouts

Compared to peers who remain in school, high school dropouts are more likely to be disconnected from school and work, incarcerated, unmarried, and have children outside of marriage. YouthBuild, a youth and community development program, focused on housing, education, employment, crime prevention, and leadership development, helps high school dropouts attain a diploma or general equivalency diploma and teaches them construction skills geared toward career placement.

The evaluation of YouthBuild is measuring core program outcomes—including educational attainment, postsecondary planning, employment, earnings, delinquency and involvement with the criminal justice system, and youth social and emotional development. Research questions include the following:

• Operation: How is YouthBuild designed in each participating site? What are the key implementation practices that affect operation? How does local context affect program implementation and available services?
  
  
• Participation: What are the characteristics of youth who enroll in the study? How are these characteristics shaped by YouthBuild recruitment and screening practices?
  
  
• Impacts: What are YouthBuild’s impacts on educational attainment, planning, and aspirations; employment, earnings, and job characteristics; crime and delinquency; and social-emotional development, identity development, and self-regulation?
  
  
• Costs: How does the net cost per sample member compare with progam impacts?

Mathematica, as a subcontractor to MDRC, is desiging and implementing a web survey of YouthBuild grantees and three mixed-mode (web and computer-assisted telephone interviewing) surveys of youth that will take place 12, 30, and 48 months after random assignment. Surveys are conducted in English and Spanish. The data collection strategy includes a mixed-mode approach that incentivizes youth to respond via the web, and includes telephone and field followup as part of our nonresponse strategy. Cognitive interviews with youth are planned to help inform the survey design.

The target population for the study is out-of-school youth aged 16-24, who are from low-income families; in foster care; offenders, migrants, disabled; or are children of incarcerated parents. The study team is recruiting 77 YouthBuild sites (60 DOL-funded sites and 17 sites funded by the Corporation for National and Community Service) and enrolling 3,465 young adults. Study participants are being randomly assigned to either the treatment group to receive YouthBuild services, or to the control group. Participants will be followed for four years.