Research Questions

1. What is the relative effectiveness of different models of vocational rehabilitation in establishing competitive employment?

2. What service recipient characteristics are related to intervention effectiveness?

3. What is the relative impact of amounts and types of services on employment outcomes?

Transcript

There were six research questions for the study. Three of the primary questions are on this slide.

1. What is the relative effectiveness of different models of vocational rehabilitation in establishing competitive employment?

2. What service recipient characteristics are related to intervention effectiveness?

3. What is the relative impact of amounts and types of services on employment outcomes?

In addition, the study looked at recipient characteristics that are related to intervention effectiveness, the direct costs of the interventions, and the reasonable accommodations used by individuals with mental illness. As previously mentioned, the study was longitudinal and occurred at centers in eight different states. The first centers to join the study were in Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. Four additional centers were added to include ones in Arizona, Massachusetts, Maine, and Texas.

Individuals who received services were followed for two years, and the data was sent to the Employment Intervention Demonstration Program Coordinating Center for analysis. In-person interviews were used to collect data semi-annually from consumers. In addition, ongoing service data, cost data, and clinical data were collected from the providers.

The important thing to remember is that individuals were randomly assigned to the type of vocational services that they received at each site. In other words, when people were newly enrolled in a center’s program, they had an equal chance of entering the comparison (or control) condition OR the enhanced (or experimental) condition. No attempt was made to match the individual to the intervention based on his or her characteristics or other variables (for example., age, sex, income level, severity of disability, type of disability, and so forth). This is important for analyzing the results, because you would then know that the outcomes were related to the intervention strategy and not some other variable.