Evaluation of the Ticket to Work Program Initial Evaluation Report

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! How many beneficiaries participate in the TTW program?
! What are the characteristics of individuals who do and do not participate in the
TTW program and how do these characteristics relate to participation?
! How do potential participants’ attitudes and perceptions of the TTW impact
whether or not they participate in the program?
! What are the most effective sources of information about TTW for potential
participants?
! How common is involuntary nonparticipation, that is, instances where a
beneficiary seeks services but their ticket is refused by an EN?
3. Impact/Outcome Analysis
This evaluation component will address SSA’s three top evaluation priorities as
highlighted in Table I.1:
! Did TTW significantly reduce dependence on SSA benefits through increased
earnings?
! What was the impact of TTW on earnings, employment duration, SSA benefits,
and beneficiary income?
! Did TTW produce net SSA program costs or savings? How much? What are
costs and benefits of the TTW program to SSA?
The evaluation will estimate program impacts using a design that compares outcomes
for TTW participants with outcomes for similar beneficiaries who do not participate. The
major challenge of the evaluation is to select comparison beneficiaries who behave as the
participants would have in the absence of the TTW program. To meet this challenge, the
evaluation will use a variety of analytic approaches, each using a specific comparison group
and statistical methodology to assess the extent to which observed differences between
participants and the comparison group members are attributable to TTW. These approaches
include comparisons within states of similar beneficiaries before and after TTW rollout,
contemporaneous comparisons during the rollout period between beneficiaries in states
where Tickets are available and those where Tickets are not yet available, and within-state
comparisons between beneficiaries who receive Tickets in early mailings and those who
receive Tickets in the last rounds of mailing (Stapleton and Livermore 2002).
The impact analysis will be conducted within the context of a general model that will be
flexible enough to accommodate all reasonable and defensible analytic approaches. This
model will generate impact estimates that, in effect, will be weighted averages of the
estimates that would be generated by the specific approaches. These will constitute the
evaluation’s “benchmark” estimates of the TTW program’s impacts. By placing restrictions
I: Overview of the Ticket to Work Program and Its Evaluation