Evaluation of Employment Coaching for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Related Populations & Long-Term Follow-Up Study

Evaluation of Employment Coaching for TANF and Related Populations Logo

2016-2026

OPRE launched this project in 2016 to evaluate interventions that apply coaching practices to promote job entry and retention among TANF populations and other individuals with low income. Coaching-based interventions have been put forth as one way to give people the tools to overcome various barriers in order to build employment-related skills and to secure work. The hypothesis underlying these approaches is that participants’ challenges may be addressed through coaching by specially trained staff who help them set individualized goals and provide support and feedback as participants work towards their goals. While coaching-focused employment programs for individuals with disabilities have been evaluated extensively, it is not yet known to what extent similar models will translate into impacts for other vulnerable groups. This project seeks to fill that gap in the research and contribute to the body of evidence regarding what works for helping TANF clients and related populations move toward self-sufficiency. 

Led by Mathematica in partnership with Abt Associates and MDRC, the project is conducting impact evaluations and complementary implementation assessments of four coaching interventions. The evaluation is also examining the impact of coaching on self-regulation skills, and the role of these skills in generating any impacts on employment outcomes. The interventions participating in the evaluation are: 

  • Family Development and Self-Sufficiency (FaDSS) program — operated by the Iowa Department of Human Rights through subcontracts with 17 local agencies across the state (seven of which are participating in the evaluation) 
  • Goal4 It! - administered by the Jefferson County Department of Human Services in Jefferson County, CO 
  • LIFT — a non-profit with locations in Washington DC; New York, NY; Chicago, IL; and Los Angeles, CA (the latter three locations are participating in the evaluation) 
  • MyGoals for Employment Success — administered by the city housing authorities in Baltimore, MD and Houston, TX

The evaluation is assessing the coaching interventions’ impacts on participant outcomes at two follow-up points—approximately 9 or 12 months after study enrollment, and approximately 21 months after study enrollment. In 2021, OPRE awarded the Evaluation of Employment Coaching Long-Term Follow-Up Study contract to Mathematica to extend the follow-up period to a third time point in order to assess long-term impacts on participant outcomes. 

Point(s) of contact: Sarita Barton, Lauren Deutsch, and Elizabeth Karberg.

Information collections related to this project have been reviewed and approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under OMB #0970-0506. Related materials are available at the Evaluation of Employment Coaching page on RegInfo.gov  Visit disclaimer page . 

The most currently approved documents are accessible by clicking on the ICR Ref. No. with the most recent conclusion date. To access the information collections (e.g., interviews, surveys, protocols), click on View Information Collection (IC) List. Click on View Supporting Statement and Other Documents to access other supplementary documents

Related Resources

This brief describes the benefits of offering employment and training services within participants' homes.

This brief shares promising strategies and lessons learned that human services agency leaders and staff might adopt to help program participants use and strengthen self-regulation skills

These briefs summarize a short term impact report by program site, which presents findings from the first 9-12 months of an RCT of four employment coaching programs' effects on participants' self-regulation and employment outcomes.

What we learned about the coach—participant relationship from employment coaching.

Lessons learned from four employment coaching programs that made major changes to their operations during the COVID-19 pandemic

From OPRE's Evaluation of Employment Coaching for TANF and Related Populations, this brief provides findings from in-depth interviews with coaching program participants to explore their experiences of coaching.

This impact report presents findings from the first 9-12 months of an RCT of four employment coaching programs' effects on participants' self-regulation and employment outcomes.

Design and implementation of the programs participating in the Evaluation of Employment Coaching for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Related Populations study.

This brief discusses what we learned about using financial incentives from studying the experience of two employment coaching programs serving adults with low incomes that offered financial incentives.

This report summarizes the design and implementation of MyGoals for Employment Success (MyGoals), an experimental employment coaching demonstration program developed by MDRC, a research organization, with assistance from Arnold Ventures and other funders, and launched in early 2017.

This brief discusses the use of video recordings of interactions between program staff and participants as a data source for an implementation study of four employment coaching interventions for people with low incomes.

LIFT, a coaching intervention in four cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, that aims to help participants identify and attain goals related to self-sufficiency.

This report summarizes the design and implementation of the Family Development and Self-Sufficiency (FaDSS) program and describes FaDSS’ design and goals, the target population and program participants, the implementation of coaching, and other services available to program participants.

This report discusses issues related to selecting and testing measures of self-regulation skills in evaluations of employment programs for low-income populations. First, it presents an overview of criteria for selecting measures of self-regulation skills. Second, through a presentation of empirical evidence, this report demonstrates a process for developing and testing self-regulation measures in the context of an impact evaluation of employment coaching programs for low-income populations. Third, it discusses how the process could be adapted to other studies.

An important goal of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other assistance programs is to help their participants become economically secure and achieve self-sufficiency. To meet this goal, some programs offer services to address challenges to employment such as those caused by lack of education or occupational skills, mental health issues, or lack of transportation or child care. However, for some participants, these services are not enough to help them become economically secure.

New research has led policymakers and researchers to argue that some people might not achieve economic independence in part because of difficulty applying the self-regulation skills needed to get, keep, and advance in a job (Pavetti 2018; Cavadel et al. 2017). These self-regulation skills—sometimes referred...

Together with the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation within the Administration for Children and Families, Mathematica and its partners Abt Associates and MDRC are examining the effectiveness of using coaches...

People’s ability to find, keep, and advance in a job depends on self-regulation skills in addition to education, work experience, and technical skills (Almlund et al. 2011). Self-regulation skills include the ability to finish tasks...