| Principal Investigator: | Greg Cumpton, PhD |
| Sponsor: | Workforce Solutions Capital Area |
| Project Duration: | July 2019 – July 2021 |
| Description: | The Ray Marshall Center will assist the Central Texas Healthcare Partnership (CTHP) by conducting an evaluation of the Upskill ATX Pilot Project. Specifically, this evaluation will provide: 1) A quantitative assessment of the outcomes of each pilot; as well as 2) A qualitative analysis of those factors that contributed to and/or inhibited specific outcomes, in order to document lessons learned and inform future workforce development investments. In addition, the evaluation will provide recommendations around options to strengthen and scale Central Texas efforts to upskill incumbent workers. |
| Reports Available: |
Evaluation of the Financial Literacy Pilot Initiative
| Principal Investigator: | Greg Cumpton, PhD |
| Sponsor: | California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office |
| Project Duration: | July 2019 – June 2021 |
| Description: | The Ray Marshall Center is conducting an evaluation of the California Community College Chancellor’s Office’s Financial Literacy Pilot Initiative. Sixteen California community colleges are participating in this pilot. Participating colleges will send students money management tips via texts or emails over the course of ten weeks. Participating colleges will share individual-level data on program participants with RMC. RMC will analyze this data to assess the impact of CCCCO’s financial literacy pilot on student outcomes such as GPA, credit attainment, retention, graduation, and credential attainment. RMC will report on participant outcomes and perform a quasi-experimental evaluation of the program. |
| Reports Available: |
Child Care Cost of Quality Modeling Study
| Principal Investigator: | Daniel Schroeder, PhD |
| Sponsor: | Texas Workforce Commission |
| Project Duration: | May 2019 – April 2021 |
| Description: | Researchers from the Ray Marshall Center (RMC) will conduct a study of the cost of providing quality child care in the state of Texas, the purpose of which is to provide estimates of how much more additional funding, in terms of daily rates, should be paid to providers who meet quality standards to care for children, relative to how much providers who do not meet such standards are paid. The study will be done in conjunction with the Texas Institute for Child and Family Wellbeing (TICFW), who will be responsible for consulting on the design of a pair of surveys to capture important quality factors and pricing information, and fielding the surveys to carefully selected samples of home- and center-based child care facilities. |
| Reports Available: |
ASPIRE Program Impact Evaluation Services
| Principal Investigator: | Heath J. Prince PhD |
| Sponsor(s): | Decision Information Resources, Inc via BakerRipley |
| Project Duration: | January 2019 – June 2020 |
| Description: | BakerRipley (formerly Neighborhood Centers, Inc.) launched ASPIRE in early 2016 as a workforce development program designed to support underemployed workers in the Houston, Texas area to successfully move from low-wage jobs to living-wage, middle-skill jobs that provide financial stability and contribute to the region’s economic growth. Decision Information Resources, Inc. (DIR) is a Houston-based minority-owned research and evaluation firm that has been involved in evaluating workforce development programs over the full course of its 34-year history.
An impact evaluation of ASPIRE will focus on comparing outcomes for program participants with program non-participants in order to measure the effectiveness of program participation. BakerRipley indicates that the impact evaluation seeks to answer the broad research question: Are ASPIRE candidates’ lives better off? And if so, by how much? The specific questions to be addressed by this impact evaluation per the ASPIRE Evaluation Plan are:
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| Reports Available: |
Central Texas Talent HUB
| Principal Investigator: | Greg Cumpton, PhD |
| Sponsor(s): | Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce and Lumina Foundation |
| Project Duration: | January 2018 – December 2018 |
| Description: | Many former college entrants interrupt their education prior to completing their degree, either dropping out completely or later returning to college. These non-completing individuals have college experience, familiarity with the application process, college credits, and knowledge of course enrollment procedures. These individuals represent a source of ready and readily accessible potential workers to whom the region could support to re-enter and complete college, increasing the labor pool of those possessing critical skills and knowledge needed in the local labor market. With direct contact information collected while in college and a repository of information about them, the Austin community intends to target this population for re-enrollment through advertising and other outreach efforts.
Researchers seek to examine stop-out patterns, barriers leading to stop-out behaviors, and assess potential solutions to re-enroll students, eventually measuring the extent to which these efforts increased the number and share of individuals returning to and completing college. |
| Reports Available: |
Project QUEST Evaluation
| Principal Investigator: | Greg Cumpton, PhD |
| Sponsor: | Economic Mobility Corporation, Inc |
| Project Duration: | January 2018 – December 2019 |
| Description: | Project QUEST provides employment training and services aligned with the skills most in demand by San Antonio, Texas employers. The Ray Marshall Center will be working with the Economic Mobility Corporation, Inc (Mobility) and building around their recent program evaluation of Project QUEST. This innovative partnership links both QUEST participants and similar non-participants to Texas Unemployment Insurance wage records. By combining self-reported and administrative data, the research will seek to verify self-reported outcomes, enhance the longitudinal tracking of employment and earnings both prior to and after completing QUEST, and measure long-term impacts of program participation. |
| Reports Available: |
Master Community Workforce Plan Evaluation
| Principal Investigator: | Greg Cumpton, PhD |
| Sponsor: | Workforce Solutions Capital Area |
| Project Duration: | January 2018 – December 2019 |
| Description: | The Ray Marshall Center (RMC) has partnered with Workforce Solutions Capital Area (WFSCA) to evaluate the progress of the Austin Metro Area Master Community Workforce Plan. The objective of the Master Plan is to effectively engage employers, community-based organizations, and educational institutions to more efficiently match employers’ skill needs and successfully prepare economically disadvantaged residents for family-sustaining careers. The RMC will investigate the educational and labor market outcomes of workforce development program participants, as well as variations in such results associated with demographic, personal, educational, and programmatic service regimes of the participants. RMC staff will work with WFSCA staff and area training providers to identify paths to the successful implementation of the Master Plan. |
| Reports Available: | Austin Metro Area Master Community Workforce Plan Baseline Evaluation Report Authors: Greg Cumpton, Cynthia Juniper, and Ashweeta Patnaik Date: October 2018 Publication Type: Report, 86pp. Family Work Support Benefits: An assessment of food and child care supports in the Austin, Texas metro area (MCWP Supplement: Poverty) |
Data Linkage for Padua™ Project Evaluation
| Principal Investigator: | Ashweeta Patnaik, MPH |
| Sponsor: | Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities, University of Notre Dame |
| Project Duration: | April 2018 – December 2020 |
| Description: | The Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) at the University of Notre Dame is examining the impact of an innovative comprehensive case management program, the Padua™ Program, created by Catholic Charities Fort Worth (CCFW). The program is designed to permanently lift people out of poverty. It addresses the fact that the disadvantaged face complex, multifaceted, and interrelated challenges by offering a new approach that considers the whole person and his or her environment by providing (a) detailed needs assessment, (b) wrap-around case management, and (c) financial resources. LEO is conducting a study to examine through a randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluation whether this innovative intervention improves the well-being of low-income individuals.
The Ray Marshall Center (RMC) is supporting LEO in its research by linking data on Padua™ program participants to administrative data on employment, wages, TANF participation, and SNAP participation. RMC will help LEO evaluate the impact of assignment to the Padua™ intervention on TANF and SNAP participation, as well as on employment and earnings. |
| Reports Available: |
Impact Evaluation of SAEP Scholarship
| Principal Investigator: | Greg Cumpton, PhD |
| Sponsor: | San Antonio Education Partnership |
| Project Duration: | February 2018 – December 2018 |
| Description: | The Ray Marshall Center entered into an agreement with the San Antonio Education Partnership to conduct an impact analysis to answer four research questions, a description of the study population, data and methodology used, and a review of the existing research that attempts to answer similar questions about the relationship between grant aid and student outcomes. The four research questions are the following:
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| Reports Available: |
Examining Reproductive Health Services of Women, Female Youth, and Female Refugees in Northern Jordan with a Behavioral Economics Lens
| Principal Investigator: | Heath J. Prince, PhD |
| Sponsor(s): | Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research |
| Project Duration: | August 2017 – July 2019 |
| Description: | The Ray Marshall Center (RMC) will partner with the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) to design, implement, and evaluate interventions that adhere to the Cairo consensus of ensuring women’s reproductive health and sexual rights (RHSR) and the rights of the vulnerable youth and refugee populations in the north while reducing population growth in accordance with the SDGs and Jordan’s needs. We propose to do this by using a combination of culturally sensitive anthropological practices and behavioral economic approaches.
A critical objective of this effort is to identify interventions that produce the desired outcomes cost-effectively, in order that these interventions may be institutionalized within Jordanian ministries and CSOs/NGOs and, therefore, more likely to be replicated throughout the country and sustained over time. |
| Reports Available: |
