Demonstration projects / Impact evaluation studies

Overview

SRDC specializes in social experiments and demonstration projects to test innovative government policies and programs. The evaluation of these projects calls on a variety of methods used in formative and summative evaluations. Most projects include, as key components, an implementation evaluation, an impact analysis, and a cost-benefit analysis.

Policy areas of research include early child development, access to post-secondary education, adult learning and literacy, labour market information, employment insurance, community-based employment, welfare-to-work, population health, programs for persons with disabilities, and crime prevention.

Projects are listed from the most recent. 

Life After High School — The Impact of Lowering Non-financial Barriers on Access to Post-secondary Education — The project will develop, implement, and test an intervention to find new ways to lower non-financial barriers on access to post-secondary education. The intervention will be targeted to British Columbia high schools with low rates of students entering post-secondary education. A sequence of three workshops will be delivered to the schools’ Grade 12 students with the aim of encouraging the students to apply for post-secondary education and related student financial aid.
Start-end date: March 2010 – July 2012
Sponsor: Human Resources and Skills Development Canada

Literacy and Essential Skills — A Workplace Training Demonstration Project — A large-scale demonstration project to measure the impacts of Literacy and Essential Skills (LES) training in the workplace. The project will utilize a random assignment design to provide the most reliable measures of the impacts of LES training on workers skills, their job performance, and other outcomes relevant to workers and firm-level objectives. Approximately 40-50 firms will be recruited with up to 1,200 workers participating, half of whom will receive training, the other half will serve as a control group in the study.
Start-end date: February 2010 – February 2013
Sponsor: Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, Office of Literacy and Essential Skills

Career Motion Pilot Project — The evaluation of a demonstration project to provide reliable evidence on whether the labour market competencies of recent graduates from colleges and universities can be improved by providing them with job search and career planning tools that are tailored to their needs. To date, SRDC has published Improving Career Decision-Making of Young Workers (2009).
Start-end date: December 2008 – November 2010
Sponsor: Human Resources and Skills Development Canada

Keeping in Touch with Project Participants: A Mailing Experiment — A randomized experiment to test the effect of between-wave mailing contact on survey response among Future to Discover project participants.
Start-end date: January 2007 – March 2008
Sponsor:  Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation

Francophone Child Care Pilot Project — An evaluation of a demonstration project involving some 400 children living in minority Francophone communities in New Brunswick, Ontario, and Alberta receiving enriched day care services in French to help them improve their school readiness, increase their linguistic skills, and develop their French cultural identity. To date, SRDC has written several reports including Methodology and Work Plan Report, Measuring Instruments Report (proposed impact and implementation measures), and Reference Report (baseline findings).
Start-end date: March 2006 – May 2013
Sponsor: Human Resources and Skills Development Canada

Case Coordination Project in Downtown Eastside Vancouver — An evaluation of a three-year demonstration project delivering a multi-component employment-related intervention designed for long-term welfare recipients living in one of the most disadvantaged urban areas in Canada. Many of the program participants had issues with housing, addictions, health (both physical and mental), income, and coping. The service delivery network comprised six non-profit organizations, including an Aboriginal organization helping Aboriginals residing in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Almost half of the program participants were Aboriginal people.
Start-end date: December 2004 – July 2008
Sponsor: City of Vancouver (Vancouver Agreement) Employment Programs

Future to Discover Pilot Project (FTD) — The evaluation of a demonstration project involving 5,400 high-school students in New Brunswick and Manitoba that is testing, through a randomized trial, an alternative form of financial support and enhanced career education as ways to increase youth participation in post-secondary education, especially youth from low-income families. Some 16% of the Manitoba participants are Aboriginal. To date, SRDC has published Future to Discover Pilot Project: Early Implementation Report (2007) and Future to Discover: Interim Impacts Report (2009).
Start-end date:  August 2003 – December 2013
Sponsor: Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation

BC Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) Pilot Project — The evaluation of a demonstration project, using a random assignment design with more than 1,300 high-school students in British Columbia, of an academic preparation model for under-achieving students who are unlikely to go on to post-secondary education without some supportive intervention. The eligibility criteria were weighted in favour of Aboriginal students; 10 per cent of the recruited sample was Aboriginal. To date, SRDC has published BC AVID Pilot Project: Early Implementation Report (2008).
Start-end date: August 2003 – December 2013
Sponsor: Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation

learn$ave — The evaluation of a demonstration project, using random assignment of participants, offering individual development accounts (matched savings accounts) to low-income families to encourage adult learning activities and small business start-up; the project involved a total of some 5,000 low-income families in 10 communities, as well as non-profit organizations to coordinate and carry out service delivery and financial institutions to maintain the accounts. To date, SRDC has published Helping People Help Themselves: An Early Look at learn$ave (2004), Design and Implementation of a Program to Help the Poor Save (2005), Learning to Save, Saving to Learn: Early Impacts of the learn$ave Individual Development Accounts Project (2008), Learning to Save, Saving to Learn: Intermediate Impacts of the learn$ave Individual Development Accounts Project (2009).
Start-end date: June 2000 – March 2009
Sponsor: Human Resources and Skills Development Canada

Community Employment Innovation Project — The evaluation of a multi-year demonstration project that tested the impact on individuals and their communities of an alternative form of income transfer for the unemployed with the aim to increase their employment prospects while simultaneously strengthening the capacity of local communities.
Start-end date: January 1999 – March 2008
Sponsors: Human Resources and Social Development Canada and Nova Scotia Department of Community Services

Earnings Supplement Project — A randomized experiment that involved more than 11,000 Employment Insurance recipients (either repeat EI users or displaced workers) in nine communities that tested the use of financial incentives in the form of temporary “earnings insurance” as a way of hastening re-employment.
Start-end date: July 1996 – March 2004
Sponsor: Human Resources Development Canada, Applied Research Branch

Self-Sufficiency Project — A randomized experiment that involved over 9,000 single-parent long-term welfare recipients from New Brunswick and British Columbia to test a “make work pay” strategy to support the transition from welfare to work.
Start-end date: February 1992 – March 2006
Sponsor: Human Resources and Social Development Canada