Giving Compass' Take:

• YVLifeSet is an intervention program that measures outcomes based on incremental growth to help young adults who are struggling overcome their challenges and have healthy lives. 

• In terms of intervention work for young adults, why is incrementalism an effective approach rather than a pass/fail system? How does a process-oriented program technique help strengthen trust and build better relationships?

• Read about how behavioral interventions are used as an approach at the BIAS project to improve services related to childcare. 

YVLifeSet’s primary objective is more comprehensive: to help young adults achieve their goals and live successfully. Which outcomes should such a program be expected to achieve when serving young adults with complex life challenges? And what outcomes did our young participants achieve because of program participation?

For programs like YVLifeSet, which aim to impact many different domains, establishing evidence of program effectiveness is particularly challenging. For many years, we’ve measured outcomes of participants against benchmarks from studies and from our own experience to render a judgement about the effectiveness of our services. These benchmarks measure whether or not program participants have attained a certain level of success in several important domains, including:

  • Employment and earnings
  • Housing stability and economic well-being
  • Criminal involvement
  • Education
  • Health and safety
  • Social support

We found that the program had significant positive impacts among youth in several important domains (employment and earnings, housing stability and economic well-being, health and safety), although it did not have impacts in other areas (criminal involvement, education, and social support). Given the diverse population of young adults who can be well-served by the program, that finding was nevertheless nothing short of amazing.

Moving from a pass/fail benchmark-based system to a progress-oriented framework that measures incremental growth might allow us to better understand the starting point for each young adult, how much progress they make toward their goals during program enrollment, and how well that progress is sustained and extended after discharge. That information, in turn, could provide a clearer picture of program effectiveness.

In today’s nonprofit environment, we’re all seeking the often-elusive proof of impact. Maybe we should turn our attention away from the thumbs-up, thumbs-down mentality often associated with RCTs, and instead focus on what else we can learn from RCTs and other types of rigorous evaluation.

Read the full article about progress through intervention by Patrick Lawler at Stanford Social Innovation Review