Notice of Random Assignment Study To Evaluate Workforce Investment Act Adult and Dislocated Worker Programs; Request for Comment, 43729-43731 [2011-18355]

Agencies

• Employment and Training Administration
• DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

[Federal Register Volume 76, Number 140 (Thursday, July 21, 2011)]
[Notices]
[Pages 43729-43731]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2011-18355]


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DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

Employment and Training Administration


Notice of Random Assignment Study To Evaluate Workforce 
Investment Act Adult and Dislocated Worker Programs; Request for 
Comment

AGENCY: Employment and Training Administration (ETA), Labor.

ACTION: Notice.

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SUMMARY: The Department of Labor (DOL or the Department) is prepared to 
conduct an evaluation to provide rigorous, nationally representative 
estimates of the net impacts of intensive services and training 
provided under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Adult and Dislocated 
Worker Programs. The Department has determined that it is in the public 
interest to use a random assignment impact methodology for the study. 
In the local workforce investment areas (LWIAs) randomly selected to 
participate in this evaluation, all applicants for intensive services 
and training under the WIA Adult and Dislocated Worker programs will be 
required to participate in the study during a 12-18 month period. The 
Department is soliciting comments concerning the Department's plan to 
carry out the study.

DATES: Written comments on the plan to require consent to participate 
in the study during the designated LWIAs' study enrollment periods must 
be received by the office listed in the addresses section below on or 
before August 4, 2011.

ADDRESSES: You may submit comments by any one of the following methods:
     Mail or Hand Delivery/Courier: Please submit all written 
comments (including disk and CD-ROM submissions) to Eileen Pederson, 
U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, 
Office of Policy Development and Research, 200 Constitution Avenue, 
NW., Frances Perkins Bldg., Room N-5641, Washington, DC 20210. 
Commenters are advised that mail delivery in the Washington area may be 
delayed due to security concerns. Hand-delivered comments will be 
received at the above address. All overnight mail will be considered to 
be hand-delivered and must be received at the designated place by the 
date specified above.
     Facsimile: Please send comments to Eileen Pederson's 
attention, at fax number (202) 693-2766.
     E-mail: Please send comments to pederson.eileen@dol.gov.
    Please submit your comments by only one method. The Department will 
not review comments received by means other than those listed above or 
that are received after the comment period has closed.
    Comments: All comments on this notice will be retained by the 
Department and released upon request via e-mail to any member of the 
public. The Department also will make all the comments it received 
available for public inspection by appointment during normal business 
hours at the above address. If you need assistance to review the 
comments, the Department will provide you with appropriate aids such as 
readers or print magnifiers. The Department will make copies of this 
notice available, upon request, in large print, Braille and electronic 
file on computer disk. The Department will consider providing the 
notice in other formats upon request. To schedule an appointment to 
review the comments and/or obtain the notice in an alternative format, 
contact the Office of Policy Development and Research at (202) 693-3700 
(this is not a toll-free number). You may also contact this office at 
the address listed above.
    The Department will retain all comments received without making any 
changes to the comments, including any personal information provided. 
If requested, the comments will be released to the public. The 
Department cautions commenters not to include their personal 
information such as Social Security Numbers, personal addresses, 
telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses in their comments as such 
submitted information will be released with the comment if the comments 
are requested. It is the commenter's responsibility to safeguard his or 
her information. If the comment is submitted by e-mail, the e-mail

[[Page 43730]]

addresses of the commenter will not be released.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Eileen Pederson, U.S. Department of 
Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Policy 
Development and Research, 200 Constitution Avenue, NW., Room N-5641, 
Washington, DC 20210. Telephone number: (202) 693-3647 (this is not a 
toll-free number). Individuals with hearing or speech impairments may 
access the telephone number above via TTY by calling the toll-free 
Federal Information Relay Service at 1-877-889-5627 (TTY/TDD).

I. Background

    The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA) brought formerly 
fragmented public and private employment services together in a single 
location within each community and made them accessible to a wider 
population than did prior employment and training service delivery 
systems. The recent recession, high unemployment rate and limited 
Federal resources serve as a reminder of the importance of ensuring 
that the services provided to people who are out of work and desiring 
to transition to new employment are as effective as possible. In order 
to improve the management and effectiveness of WIA services and related 
activities, section 172 of the WIA requires the Department to 
continually evaluate WIA programs and activities. These evaluations 
must ``utilize appropriate methodology and research designs, including 
the use of control groups chosen by scientific random assignment 
methodologies.'' Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, and the 
Government Accountability Office have called on DOL to conduct an 
evaluation now in order to learn if WIA-funded intensive services and 
training are as effective as they can be. Accordingly, ETA is 
conducting a multisite control group evaluation to provide rigorous, 
nationally representative estimates of the net impacts of WIA intensive 
services and training provided under the Adult and Dislocated Worker 
Programs.
    Generally speaking, intensive services are services that involve 
staff assistance and include assessments, counseling, and job 
placement. Training includes education and occupational skills 
building. This evaluation will offer policymakers, program 
administrators, and service providers information about the relative 
effectiveness of Adult and Dislocated Worker intensive services and 
training, how the effectiveness varies by target population, and how 
the services and training are implemented. The study will also produce 
estimates of the benefits and costs of these services and training. The 
study's key goal is to generate findings that are applicable to the 
national WIA Adult and Dislocated Worker programs.
    To obtain rigorous, nationally representative estimates of WIA's 
effectiveness for adults and dislocated workers, the Department plans 
to use a random assignment impact methodology for the evaluation. The 
evaluation will take place in approximately 30 randomly selected LWIAs. 
WIA applicants in the selected LWIAs who are eligible for intensive 
services will be randomly assigned to one of three groups. The three 
research groups to which they will be assigned are: (1) The full-WIA 
group--adults and dislocated workers in this group can receive any WIA 
services and training for which they are eligible, (2) the core-and-
intensive group--adults and dislocated workers in this group can 
receive any WIA services for which they are eligible other than 
training, and (3) the core-only group--adults and dislocated workers in 
this group can receive only WIA core services but no intensive services 
or training. Overall, 94 percent of all WIA applicants in the 
participating LWIAs who are eligible for and interested in intensive 
services or training will be assigned to the full-WIA group.
    In the LWIAs randomly selected to participate in the evaluation, 
all applicants for intensive services and/or training under the WIA 
Adult and Dislocated Worker programs will be asked to participate in 
the study during the 12-18 month study enrollment period. They will be 
informed of the evaluation, provided an opportunity to ask questions or 
seek clarification of their role and responsibilities should they agree 
to participate, and then required to give their consent to participate. 
Applicants who do not consent to participate in the study will be 
allowed to receive core services only. The sample intake period will 
range between 12 and 18 months at each site. A total of about 68,000 
WIA adult and dislocated worker program applicants will be randomly 
assigned to the evaluation.
    The Department has determined that it is in the public interest to 
use a random assignment impact methodology. Random assignment is 
generally viewed as the best and most feasible design for credibly and 
reliably answering questions about the effectiveness of social programs 
and policy interventions. This is because when implemented carefully, 
random assignment creates groups that are, on average, identical in 
their characteristics before the intervention. Hence, any differences 
in the employment outcomes of customers in the three research groups 
can be confidently attributed to differences in the service 
intervention. Moreover, because of funding limitations, not all people 
who are eligible for, and could benefit from, WIA services can receive 
them. As a result, the total number of people who are served will not 
be affected by the study.
    The Department recognizes that this design will assign some 
applicants to groups that limit their access to WIA services. However, 
the study was designed to balance two objectives: (1) To fulfill the 
mandate for a rigorous evaluation of WIA and (2) to maximize the number 
of customers in the study who have access to the full set of WIA-funded 
services. Since the three research groups will be identical except for 
their ability to access different levels of WIA-funded assistance, any 
differences in outcomes between the groups will be attributable to the 
WIA services. To meet the second objective, the study design allows 
most adult and dislocated worker customers to have access to the full 
set of WIA-funded assistance. Only a small percentage of customers will 
be restricted to receiving core services or core-and-intensive 
services. Those customers who are assigned to either the core only or 
core-and-intensive only research groups will be eligible to apply for 
intensive services and training 15 months after enrollment into the 
study.
    To protect the rights and welfare of One-Stop Career Center 
customers who agree to participate in the evaluation, the evaluation 
team, consisting of researchers from Mathematica Policy Research and 
MDRC, submitted the WIA Evaluation design to MDRC's Institutional 
Review Board (IRB) for concurrence. On June 17, 2010, the IRB 
determined this study to be of minimal risk and unanimously approved 
it.

II. Desired Focus of Comments

    Currently, DOL is soliciting comments concerning the Department's 
intent to carry out the random assignment study described above: for 
the limited enrollment period, applicants for WIA intensive and 
training services would be required to consent to participate in the 
study, where they would be randomly assigned to one of the three 
research groups. Applicants who do not consent to participate would 
receive core services. This requirement would apply only to applicants 
for intensive services and training provided in the limited

[[Page 43731]]

number of LWIAs selected to participate in this evaluation.
    The Department seeks comments focused on whether there is a 
methodology that would yield as credible and reliable an evaluation of 
the WIA program as random assignment, but avoids adverse affect on the 
study participants. The Department also welcomes comments that suggest 
ways to more effectively minimize any adverse impact on the study 
participants who participate in the study described above.

III. Current Actions

    Following receipt of comments in response to this request, ETA will 
adjust, as appropriate, the approach for temporarily requiring 
applicants for WIA intensive services and training at selected LWIAs to 
participate in random assignment. Comments submitted in response to 
this request will also become a matter of public record.

    Signed: at Washington, DC this 15th day of July, 2011.
Jane Oates,
Assistant Secretary, Employment and Training Administration.
[FR Doc. 2011-18355 Filed 7-20-11; 8:45 am]
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