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The Employment Coaching study has produced many publications. See below for a list of resources for practitioners; resources specific to each program in this study—FaDSS, MyGoals, LIFT, and Goal4 It!; information about conducting coaching research; and information about the impact of the coaching programs in this study. For other resources relevant to coaching approaches, self-regulation skills, and program implementation, please visit the other resources page of this hub. For more information and a complete listing of all available reports, please visit the OPRE project website. To contact the study team, please email coaching@mathematica-mpr.com.
Briefs and resources for practitioners
| Description | Link |
|---|---|
| This brief highlights the experiences of and adaptations made by the four employment coaching programs in the study during the COVID-19 pandemic. | Employment Coaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned |
| This brief describes the importance of self-regulation skills to employment success and how employment coaching programs may improve employment outcomes | Employment Coaching: Working with Low-Income Populations to Use Self-Regulation Skills to Achieve Employment Goals |
| These briefs provide a short overview of the four employment coaching programs in the study : FaDSS, LIFT, MyGoals, and Goal4 It! | Employment Coaching Program Snapshots |
| This brief describes lessons learned about implementing coaching for families receiving TANF benefits from two programs in the study: FaDSS and Goal4 It! | Providing Employment Coaching to Families Receiving TANF Benefits: Lessons Learned |
| This brief describes why employment coaching programs and employment service practitioners more generally might consider offering services in participants’ homes. | The Potential of Home-Based Employment Coaching to Support Economic Stability |
| 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. | Strengthening Self-Regulation Skills Through Employment Coaching: Strategies and Lessons from Four Programs |
| This brief may inform providers and program developers about how to build and promote strong coach-participant relationships. | How to Build Strong Coach–Participant Relationships: Insights from Program Leaders, Coaches, and Participants |
| This brief may inform program developers, providers, and policymakers about how employment coaching is implemented from the participant perspective and to share lessons for how to improve coaching interventions. | Employment Coaching: What Do Participants Say? |
| This brief discusses lessons learned about using financial incentives in two programs in the study, LIFT and MyGoals. | Should Human Services Programs Offer Financial Incentives? Lessons Learned from Two Employment Coaching Programs |
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Information about FaDSS
| Description | Link |
|---|---|
| This brief provides an overview of the FaDSS program. | FaDSS Program Snapshot |
| This report describes findings from evaluating the implementation of FaDSS. | Family Development and Self-Sufficiency (FaDSS): Implementation Findings from the Evaluation of Employment Coaching |
| This brief presents impacts of the FaDSS program on participants’ self-regulation skills, employment, earnings, self-sufficiency, and other measures of personal and family well-being at 9 months after study enrollment. | An employment coaching program using home visiting showed promise in improving TANF participants’ outcomes: Impacts of FaDSS at 9 months |
| This brief presents impacts of the FaDSS program on participants’ self-regulation skills, employment, earnings, self-sufficiency, and other measures of personal and family well-being at 21 months after study enrollment. | An employment coaching program using home visiting had limited effects on TANF participants’ outcomes: Impacts of FaDSS at 21 months |
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Information about MyGoals
| Description | Link |
|---|---|
| This brief provides an overview of the MyGoals program. | MyGoals Program Snapshot |
| This report describes findings from evaluating the implementation of MyGoals. | MyGoals for Employment Success: Implementation Findings from the Evaluation of Employment Coaching |
| This brief presents impacts of the MyGoals program on participants’ self-regulation skills, employment, earnings, self-sufficiency, and other measures of personal and family well-being at 12 months after study enrollment. | An employment coaching program serving adults receiving housing assistance showed promise in improving outcomes: Impacts of MyGoals at 12 months |
| This brief presents impacts of the MyGoals program on participants’ self-regulation skills, employment, earnings, self-sufficiency, and other measures of personal and family well-being at 21 months after study enrollment. | An employment coaching demonstration program focusing on self-regulation skills showed promise in improving outcomes at 21 months: Impacts of MyGoals |
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Information about LIFT
| Description | Link |
|---|---|
| This brief provides an overview of the LIFT program. | LIFT Program Snapshot |
| This report describes findings from evaluating the implementation of LIFT. | LIFT: Implementation Findings from the Evaluation of Employment Coaching |
| This brief presents impacts of the LIFT program on participants’ self-regulation skills, employment, earnings, self-sufficiency, and other measures of personal and family well-being at 9 months after study enrollment. | An employment coaching program for parents of young children has limited effects in the short term: Impacts of LIFT at 9 months |
| This brief presents impacts of the LIFT program on participants’ self-regulation skills, employment, earnings, self-sufficiency, and other measures of personal and family well-being at 21 months after study enrollment. | An employment coaching program for parents of young children has limited effects at 21 months: Impacts of LIFT |
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Information about Goal4 It!
| Description | Link |
|---|---|
| This brief provides an overview of the Goal4 It! program. | Goal4 It! Program Snapshot |
| This report describes findings from evaluating the implementation of the Goal4 It! program. | Goal4 It! for Employment Success: Implementation Findings from the Evaluation of Employment Coaching |
| This brief presents impacts of the Goal4 It! program on participants’ self-regulation skills, employment, earnings, self-sufficiency, and other measures of personal and family well-being at 9 months after study enrollment. | TANF participants who were offered employment coaching and those offered traditional case management had similar short-term outcomes: Impacts of Goal4 It!™ at 9 months |
| This brief presents impacts of the Goal4 It! program on participants’ self-regulation skills, employment, earnings, self-sufficiency, and other measures of personal and family well-being at 21 months after study enrollment. | TANF participants who were offered employment coaching and those offered traditional case management had similar outcomes at 21 months: Impacts of Goal4 It!™ |
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Information about conducting coaching research
| Description | Link |
|---|---|
| This report outlines the research design for the Evaluation of Employment Coaching, including key research questions, methods, and considerations. | Evaluation of Employment Coaching for TANF and Related Populations: Evaluation Design Report |
| This brief highlights the importance of visual observations in understanding coaching, along with a review of the methods used in gathering video recordings of employment coaching programs. | Using Video Recordings as a Data Collection Strategy: Lessons from the Evaluation of Employment Coaching |
| This report examines criteria for selecting and testing measures of self-regulations skills, as well as the extent to which these measures capture what they were designed to measure. | Selecting and Testing Measures of Self-Regulation Skills Among Low-Income Populations |
| This report details the challenges and best practices for measuring self-regulation skills in evaluations of employment programs. | Measuring Self-Regulation Skills in Evaluations of Employment Programs for Low-Income Populations: Challenges and Recommendations |
| This report synthesizes the findings from evaluating the implementation of the four employment coaching programs in the study. It describes the key differences and similarities of the programs’ context and design and discusses the key findings about the implementation of coaching. | Using Coaching to Address Economic Stability for People with Low Incomes: The Design and Implementation of Four Employment Coaching Programs |
| This brief informs evaluators of employment programs about new and promising approaches to subgroup analysis by illustrating how Bayesian methods can complement traditional methods. | Using Bayesian Methods to Conduct Subgroup Analysis in Evaluations of Employment Programs |
| This report examines how measures of self-regulation skills relate to future outcomes. The results can inform researchers who work with employment programs on how to promote self-regulation skills or who plan to use measures of self-regulation skills in evaluations of employment programs. | The Predictive Power of Measures of Self-Regulation Skills Among Adults with Low Incomes |
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Information about the impact of employment coaching programs included in this evaluation
| Description | Link |
|---|---|
| This report presents impacts of four employment coaching programs on participants’ self-regulation skills, employment, earnings, self-sufficiency, and other measures of personal and family well-being at 9 or 12 months (depending on the program) after study enrollment. | Can a Participant-Centered Approach to Setting and Pursuing Goals Help Adults with Low Incomes Become Economically Stable? Short-Term Impacts of Four Employment Coaching Programs |
| This report presents impacts of four employment coaching programs on participants’ self-regulation skills, employment, earnings, self-sufficiency, and other measures of personal and family well-being at 21 months after study enrollment. | Can a Participant-Centered Approach to Setting and Pursuing Goals Help Adults with Low Incomes Become Economically Stable? Impacts of Four Employment Coaching Programs 21 Months after Enrollment |
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Acknowledgments
Developing this report was a collaborative effort. We thank the many people who made this information hub possible.
We recognize the following Mathematica staff members for their contributions:
Web development team: Barbara Gelhard, George Hoffman, Aivo Kivi, and Kimberly Whiters
Data visualization team: James Troxel
Communications team: Rich Clement and Deric Joyner
Research team: Kristen Joyce, Michelle Derr (The Adjacent Possible), Dina Marie Zagari-LiMandri, Andrew Krantz, Sam Vance, Rebecca Connelly Kersting, and Mary Kalb
We thank OPRE for supporting the Employment Coaching evaluation. We are deeply grateful for guidance and feedback from former and current OPRE project officers Hilary Bruck, Lauren Deutsch Stanton, Elizabeth Karberg, Sarita Barton, and Megha Patel. We also thank the OPRE Website Support Team at Child Trends - Justin Falcone, Joseph Boven, and Ana Maria Pavic - for their contributions to the development of the information hub.
Many people worked on the Employment Coaching evaluation and contributed to the success of the study and the reports we used to develop this report. We also want to thank our partners at Abt Associates, MDRC, and The Adjacent Possible.
The evaluation would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the staff at the four employment coaching programs participating in the evaluation. They helped us shape the evaluation to align with their program, implemented an experimental evaluation, hosted us for site visits, responded to surveys, participated in interviews, videotaped coaching sessions, and provided clarifying feedback for reports developed under this evaluation. Finally, we are especially grateful to the thousands of people who volunteered to participate in the evaluation and shared information about their lives. We extend a special thanks to the people who participated in the video interviews featured in this hub. We could not have developed this report without their willingness to openly share their views and experiences.
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Suggested citation
Moore, Quinn, April Yanyuan Wu, and Sheena McConnell. “Employment Coaching Study Information Hub.” OPRE Report #2023-235. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2023.
Disclaimer
The views expressed in this hub do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of OPRE, ACF, or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
OPRE project officers: Lauren Deutsch Stanton, Sarita Barton, and Megha Patel
Mathematica project director: Quinn Moore
References
1Cavadel, Elizabeth W., Jacqueline F. Kauff, Mary Anne Anderson, Sheena McConnell, Michelle Derr. (2016). Self-Regulation and Goal Attainment: A New Perspective for Employment Programs, OPRE Report #2017-12, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
2Muraven, Mark and Roy F. Baumeister, (2000). Self-regulation and Depletion of Limited Resources: Does Self-control Resemble a Muscle? Psychological Bulletin, 126(2), 247–259. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.126.2.247
3Mani, Anandi, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir, Jiaying Zhao, (2013). Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function. Science 341, 976–980.
4Mullainathan, Sendhil., and Eldar Shafir. (2013). Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. Henry Holt.