Evaluation of Employment Coaching for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Related Populations & Long-Term Follow-Up Study, 7 U.S. states, 2016-2026

Employment coaching involves trained staff working collaboratively with participants to help them set individualized goals directly or indirectly related to employment and providing motivation, support, and feedback as participants work toward those goals. Unlike most traditional case managers, coaches work in partnership with participants and do not tell the participants what goals they should pursue or what action steps to take in pursuing them. Recently, there has been growing interest among policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and others in using employment coaching to assist Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and other adults with low incomes.
To learn more about the potential of employment coaching, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) funded an experimental impact study of four employment coaching programs conducted as part of the Evaluation of Employment Coaching for TANF and Related Populations. The impact study evaluated the effectiveness of each program on study participants' self-regulation skills, employment, earnings, and other measures of personal and family well-being during the 21 months after participants enrolled in the study. Data and documentation for the longer term follow-up, 48 to 67 months after study enrollment, are forthcoming.
The four employment coaching programs included in the evaluation are:

Family Development and Self-Sufficiency (FaDSS), which serves TANF recipients and their family members in Iowa. Participation in FaDSS is voluntary and most coaching sessions occur in the participant's home.
Goal4 It!TM, which provides employment coaching to TANF recipients in Jefferson County, Colorado in lieu of traditional case management. Receipt of TANF benefits is conditional on participation in either Goal4 It! or traditional case management.
LIFT, which is a voluntary coaching program operated in four U.S. cities. Most coaching is conducted by unpaid student interns from Master of Social Work programs.
MyGoals for Employment Success (MyGoals), which is a voluntary coaching program that served recipients of public housing assistance in Baltimore, Maryland, and Houston, Texas.

The impact study addressed the following primary research questions:
Do the coaching programs improve the outcomes of adults with low incomes?
Specifically:

Do the coaching programs affect participants' intermediate outcomes related to self-regulation and other skills associated with labor market success?
Do the coaching programs affect participants' employment and economic security outcomes?
How do the impacts of the coaching programs change over time?
Are the coaching programs more effective for some groups of participants than others?

Between February 2017 and November 2019, about 4,300 adults who were eligible for one of the four employment coaching programs and who consented to participate in the evaluation were randomly assigned either to (1) a program group that had access to employment coaching, or (2) a control group that did not have access to employment coaching but could receive other services available in the community. The effectiveness of each employment coaching program was assessed based on differences in average outcomes between program and control group members. Impacts were estimated during two follow-up periods: at 9 to 12 months after study enrollment (depending on the program; Moore et al. 2023) and at 21 months after study enrollment (Moore et al. forthcoming).
To estimate the impacts of employment coaching, the study used data from: (1) a baseline survey or form administered to study participants at the time of study enrollment, (2) follow-up surveys administered to study participants approximately 9 to 12 months after study enrollment, and again approximately 21 months after study enrollment, (3) administrative employment and Unemployment Insurance records from the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH), and (4) administrative records from state and local agencies on participation in public assistance programs.
The employment coaching restricted-use data collection includes nine files with data from these sources, excluding administrative and Unemployment Insurance records from the NDNH. Some of the files include data for a single program, while others combine data for more than one program. A user guide provides documentation for each file.

Long-term data will be added to this study homepage in the future.