Publications

One in five U.S. children live in poverty. This review examines how children and parents think and feel about poverty and public benefits, as well as how families discuss their economic circumstances. Children report awareness of both material deprivation and stigma.

The Center for Applied Behavioral Science (CABS) combines MDRC’s decades of experience tackling social policy issues with insights from behavioral science. This graphic explains the CABS’s approach to solving problems.

This community college reform directs remedial math students into accelerated course sequences focused on statistics or quantitative reasoning, depending on their programs of study. In a random assignment evaluation, students in the pathways group are enrolling in and passing college-level math at a higher rate than students in traditional courses.

Fathers in Responsible Fatherhood programs can face numerous barriers to remaining involved with their children. This brief describes how MDRC collaborated with fathers to develop DadTime, one of the first smartphone applications designed specifically to help fathers improve their engagement with and attendance at parenting programs.

A key to interpreting study findings is considering not just the features of a program being tested, but how it differs from business as usual — which may change over the course of the evaluation. The Implementation Research Incubator discusses guidelines for measuring this contrast.

Community college students who enroll in summer courses are more likely to graduate, but most do not attend during the summer. The Encouraging Additional Summer Enrollment (EASE) project uses insights from behavioral science to encourage more students to enroll in summer. This brief presents EASE’s Phase I findings.

To address underplacement, in which students who could succeed in college-level courses are directed into developmental education, community colleges have begun supplementing the typical placement test with measures like high school GPA and noncognitive assessments. This guide walks colleges through the process and pitfalls of undertaking this kind of reform.

This report from the Community College Research Center and MDRC describes how three institutions — University of North Carolina, Charlotte; California State University, Fresno; and Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania — are implementing comprehensive, technology-based advising reforms, including detailed examples of new advising practices, outreach methods, and messages to students.

In the second of two posts on the research opportunities presented by school choice systems, Reflections on Methodology discusses a few issues common to lottery-based analyses — constrained statistical power, imperfect compliance, and restricted generalizability.

To help City University of New York (CUNY) students referred to developmental (remedial) education, CUNY Start delays their enrollment in a degree program for one semester of intensive instruction. This report describes students’ progress through developmental education after one semester, and college enrollment in the semester thereafter.

This benefit-cost analysis examines an Indianapolis program that offered subsidized jobs, case management, peer mentorship, and other support to former prisoners. The program reduced incarcerations and increased employment and earnings among participants, and the overall benefits to society from these effects outweighed program costs.

Drawing from the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project, this case study is designed as a teaching guide for students and practitioners. Using the example of an effort to increase participation in a tax-credit program, exercises help readers apply behavioral science principles to a real-life problem.

In a randomized controlled trial, measuring treatment contrast – the difference in services received by a program group and those in a counterfactual condition – is critical for understanding what a program’s effects suggest about the best ways to improve services. This paper explains why treatment contrast is important and offers guidance about how to measure it.

STRIVE International engaged MDRC to help the organization improve a new program model aimed at increasing educational attainment and employment of young adults involved in the juvenile justice system. This Issue Focus describes the partnership and offers advice to organizations implementing new programs on how to build evidence of effectiveness.

A student success program for Detroit Promise scholarship recipients combines coaching, a monthly incentive, summer outreach to keep students engaged, and a management information system used to communicate with students and track their progress. This Issue Focus provides more detail about the program model and shares early implementation lessons.

By studying the implementation of an initiative to improve college readiness in rural schools, researchers were able to identify obstacles and help program leaders improve the process. The Implementation Research Incubator explains.

“Transitional jobs” are temporary, subsidized jobs meant to teach participants basic work skills or help them get started with an employer. The Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration tested seven such programs for people recently released from prison or low-income parents behind on child support. This report presents the final impact results.

A training program for parole officers in Dallas, Denver, and Des Moines sought to address the persistently high recidivism rates among individuals leaving prison. This study’s results show that officers generally already knew many of the curriculum’s concepts, and changes to their practices were limited.

One focus of the Expanding Children’s Early Learning (ExCEL) Network is the potential value of programs to promote school readiness in the months preceding kindergarten. This brief summarizes lessons learned from a six-week pilot program and consultation with practitioners on three implementation issues — recruitment, attendance, and family involvement.

Many young scholars supported by the Gueron Fund Minority Scholars Program have enriched our organization by participating in fellowships and internships at MDRC over the last 10+ years. And they have gone on to do wonderful things in a variety of places (including coming back to work at MDRC!).