Evaluation of the Ticket to Work Program Initial Evaluation Report

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The first version of this database will be analyzed in spring 2004. It will be updated in
2005 and 2007 and incorporated into the reports issued in those years.
Other administrative data will come from the Program Manager’s TTW system and the
Rehabilitation Services Administration, which collects data about vocational rehabilitation
service delivery. Those data will be essential to describing participation in TTW, particularly
for beneficiaries who are served by SVRAs under the traditional payment system before and
after the roll-out of the other TTW provisions. The Program Manager data is already being
collected and should be available for all of the subsequent evaluation reports. SSA is
currently negotiating with the Rehabilitation Services Administration to link individual
vocational rehabilitation records with SSA records.
2. Surveys
A series of surveys will contribute to the outcomes and impacts analysis, the adequacy
of incentives analysis, the process analysis, and the participation analysis. The surveys will
provide detailed information about beneficiaries’ understanding of the TTW program, their
attitudes and expectations about work and their actual work activity (including their wages,
hours of work, occupations, and fringe benefits).
There will be two sets of surveys. First, the National Beneficiary Survey will interview a
representative cross section of all active beneficiaries. This survey will be repeated each year
starting February 2004 and continuing through 2007. It will track beneficiaries’ knowledge
and views of TTW and other SSA programs as well as their levels of employment and
service use. The evaluation will use this survey to analyze TTW participation and to
understand the overall context within which TTW is fielded. Because it includes a
representative sample of all beneficiaries, SSA will also use this survey to address broader
issues, including beneficiary understanding and use of currently available work incentives,
and to inform the design of future employment initiatives and beneficiary outreach and
education strategies.
Second, the TTW Participant Survey will interview a representative sample of
beneficiaries who have assigned Tickets to ENs. We will use data from this survey to assess
beneficiaries’ experiences with ENs, particularly their service receipt, job placements, and
satisfaction levels. This survey includes a new cross-section of beneficiaries each year as well
as longitudinal follow-up interviews with a sample of the beneficiaries interviewed in the
previous year. Altogether, more than 27,000 interviews are planned with beneficiaries and
participants during the evaluation.
The beneficiary questionnaire is currently being finalized after a pretest conducted in
December 2003. The sampling plan has already been developed and approved, and the
sample for the first National Beneficiary Survey will be drawn from a list of all beneficiaries
who received benefits in June 2003 (the survey will also include some beneficiaries whose
benefits were temporarily suspended). The initial round of the longitudinal TTW Participant
Survey will be drawn from all beneficiaries who had a Ticket in use between January 1, 2003
and September 1, 2003. That is, it will include beneficiaries who had their Ticket assigned
VIII: Next Steps for Evaluation