Glossary

Provision of direct, ongoing support to program participants before, during, and/or after employment or training. Case management may involve assessing participants’ needs, connecting participants to services (including public benefits), coordination of service referrals, helping participants meet program requirements, and providing personalized, sustained assistance. Case management may be an intervention's primary service.

People served by public benefits programs or initiatives that provide a direct payment of cash, including TANF.

Payments designed to provide participants with an income or strategies to help participants retain their income. Cash/Income Supports may be an intervention's primary service.

Child support provides monetary payments made by a non-custodial parent to the custodial parent to supplement the financial costs of raising the child. Child support assistance may include supporting custodial parents with applying for child support; providing education about child support to noncustodial parents; working with the child support program or the custodial parent to modify child support orders; providing assistance to consolidate petitions on multiple child support cases; and/or helping to reduce penalties for arrears. Child support assistance may be an intervention's primary service.

Direct program assistance, including Head Start and Early Head Start programs or other early childhood programs, as well as cash or vouchers that assist in the education or care of children (e.g., childcare vouchers provided by TANF). Childcare and/or early education may be an intervention's primary service.

A group with characteristics similar to those of intervention group members, except that those in the comparison group do not have an opportunity to receive the services of interest. The comparison group is intended to represent what would have happened to members of the intervention group if they had not been offered the services from the intervention of interest.

A factor that might affect how well an intervention works and that applies differently to the intervention and comparison groups. Because this factor can affect one group and not the other, the presence of a confounding factor causes us to question a study’s findings. One type of confounding factor is an element external to the intervention that reaches only the members of one study group—for instance, if all members of the intervention group lived in one state and all members of the comparison group lived in another state. In this case, it would be impossible to separate the effect of the program or policy from that of local economic conditions.