From Theory to Practice: Exploring Long-Term Evaluation Outcomes by Linking to Administrative Data

2019 – 2022

This project will develop products intended to expand the use of administrative data in analyzing long-term outcomes of federal social program interventions. Deliverables will include a guide to assist researchers in linking program evaluation data to administrative data to examine long-term outcomes and a memo on the potential impacts of data linking on the quality, strength, and representativeness of such data when used for research purposes. Optional work would design and carry out analyses of long-term outcomes of selected employment-focused evaluations. This project follows on a prior project, Assessing Options to Evaluate Long-Term Outcomes Using Administrative Data: Identifying Targets of Opportunity, which assessed the feasibility of creating linked data resources for selected major social service evaluation studies focusing on employment.

MDRC is the contractor for this work

The point of contact is Brett Brown

Related Resources

Explore whether and to what extent the choice of an employment data source matters in studies like National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (NEWWS). 

The findings described in this report represent some of the first available evidence on how individuals who previously received welfare fared in the labor market over the long term and on how sequence and cluster analyses can provide a richer picture of their trajectories and program impacts.

This guide is a resource to assist program evaluation project teams—including funders, sponsors, and evaluation research partners—in assessing the feasibility and potential value of examining long-term outcomes using administrative data.

The Compendium of Administrative Data Sources for Self-Sufficiency Research is an effort to describe promising administrative data sources for evaluations of economic and social interventions. The Compendium was created as part of the Assessing Options to Evaluate Long-Term Outcomes Using Administrative Data (LTO) project funded by the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (ACF/OPRE) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services...