Evaluating a youth workforce development program in Michigan. This work included designing an evaluation framework, using that framework to identify important research questions, conducting a literature review and analysis of administrative data to shed light on important trends, fielding and analyzing a participant survey, and presenting findings. It helped our customer and their stakeholders to understand that the program is performing well, while also identifying opportunities to strengthen it.

Analyzing the economic benefits of a pilot of an at-risk youth program. This worked focused on a promising program in Alabama designed to keep youth out of jail and reduce crime rates. We reviewed existing literature and applied a best-in-class economic model to help funders understand the value of the program and underpin a request for increased budget from the state to support a program expansion.

Predicting participant engagement, and the resulting impact on program finances, for a local health program in California. This project used ethically-designed randomized controlled trials to measure the impact of outreach to program participants using a variety of outreach methods. Using existing administrative data and the data we generated from these trials, we predicted how many participants would engage with the program over a 3-year timespan and what that meant for program resources. This helped the program and its funders do better financial planning and consider possible policy changes.

Assessing the impacts of lead exposures on students in Flint, Michigan, estimating the impacts on the school system and additional support needed to assist impacted students. We estimated the cost of these services in support of a funding request for the school system. 

Forecasting program growth, and the impact this growth would have on program administrative costs under a variety of scenarios. This helped a program funder understand that typical historical costs were a poor guide for the future, and committing to take on a new financial burden of program fees would be a costly option.

Developing an easy-to-use, informative, interactive dashboard to help program administrators and stakeholders understand program trends, the roots of current challenges, and where program resources could most efficiently be targeted.

Conducting an exploratory data analysis of an important program trend. We analyzed multiple data sources for 17 state agencies, including administrative data, qualitative data, Google Trends data, publicly available surveys, and information about comparable programs, to shed light on this trend, test several hypotheses, and identify areas for targeted technical assistance.