Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse

People who run programs for low-income job seekers need evidence on interventions and strategies that can help their clients succeed in the labor market. Other professional fields also need these data, including those making decisions about how best to allocate public resources and those seeking to expand the existing knowledge base.

To provide reliable and accessible information about what works to help job seekers find and keep gainful employment, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) launched the Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse. The Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse is based on rigor, credibility, and accessibility.

• Rigor: The Pathways Clearinghouse applies rigorous standards to assess the quality of research on employment-focused interventions serving low-income people. After assessing the quality of the research, the Pathways Clearinghouse rates the effectiveness of these interventions in terms of earnings, employment, receipt of public benefits, and education and training. These protocols produce a set of ratings for each study and each intervention and can be used to compare the effectiveness of one intervention to another.

• Credibility: The people who design and manage job seeker programs are the experts when it comes to what information they need and how to present that information. OPRE worked with a group of these experts, including TANF administrators and employment service providers, throughout the development of the Pathways Clearinghouse. Their insight and feedback influenced every aspect of this project, including how to present survey and intervention information in a manner most relevant to their needs. They also tested every feature of the website. OPRE continues to rely on the involvement of practitioners, policymakers, and researchers to understand what evidence they need and how to present it on the website.

• Accessibility: The Pathways Clearinghouse is designed to help practitioners, policymakers, and researchers easily access and understand the effectiveness of interventions aimed at improving the employment outcomes of low-income job seekers. The website is a single source of information on more than 177 interventions based on more than 246 individual studies, with new reviews in progress. The search tool "Find Interventions that Work" allows people-including employment service providers to look for interventions that are most likely to meet their clients' needs-to quickly find the most relevant information. Information about the effectiveness of an intervention is presented along with information about how to implement that intervention and the context in which it has been proven to work.

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