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Intervention: JOBSTART

Research

The WWC reviewed one study of the effectiveness of JOBSTART. This study (Cave, Bos, Doolittle, & Toussaint, 1993) was a randomized controlled trial that met WWC evidence standards.

Cave, Bos, Doolittle, and Toussaint (1993) examined the effectiveness of JOBSTART in 13 sites in nine states. From 1985 to 1987, 2,312 eligible youth who applied for JOBSTART services across these 13 sites were randomly assigned: 1,163 to the intervention group that was offered JOBSTART services and 1,149 to the control group that was not. The results summarized here are based on data for the 988 JOBSTART youth and the 953 control group youth who responded to the 48-month follow-up survey.

Extent of evidence

The WWC categorizes the extent of evidence in each domain as small or moderate to large (see thePDF File What Works Clearinghouse Extent of Evidence Categorization Scheme (31 KB)). The extent of evidence takes into account the number of studies and the total sample size across studies that met WWC evidence standards.5

The WWC considers the extent of evidence for JOBSTART to be small for completing school. No studies that met WWC evidence standards addressed JOBSTART’s effect on staying in school or progressing in school.

5 The Extent of Evidence Categorization was developed to tell readers how much evidence was used to determine the intervention rating, focusing on the number and size of studies. Additional factors associated with a related concept, external validity—such as students’ demographics and types of settings in which studies took place—are not taken into account for the categorization. Information about how the extent of evidence rating was determined for JOBSTART is in Appendix A6.