Projects

Development, Implementation and Impact Evaluation of Academic Instruction for After-School Programs (on-going)
Dr. Grossman is a senior member the evaluation team responsible for assessing the effectiveness of specially tailored after-school academic curricula developed for this demonstration. This $13 million multi-organizational U.S. Department of Education project. involves conducting two parallel random assignment evaluations (each with 1000 sample members) of the reading and math curricula, testing the impacts on key student outcomes, especially on academic achievement.

Evaluation of School-Based Mentoring (on-going)
Dr. Grossman, along with colleagues at P/PV and Big Brothers Big Sister of America, are designing and conducting a random assignment evaluation of school-based mentoring programs. The study will follow the lives of approximately 1,600 elementary and middle school students for a year and a half from the time they apply to the program. The lessons generated from this study can be spread nationwide to improve the support children receive in school.

Evaluation of the Philadelphia Beacon Initiative (on-going)
In this study, Dr. Grossman and colleagues at P/PV are investigating what makes a high quality after-school program. Using observation, staff questionnaires and student surveys, the team is examining what staff and program practices promote engagement and learning in the students. A critical question that will be addressed is whether the staff practices of high quality academic activities differ from those of high quality non-academic activities.

Children’s Future: Improving the Well-Being of Trenton’s Children (on-going)
Dr. Grossman is working on an evaluation of Robert Wood Johnson’s Children’s Future Initiative to improve the health and well-being of Trenton’s children ages 0-3. The study consists of both formative research aimed at help the program run better and summative research aimed at determining what the initiative achieved over a four-year period. The study includes a survey of parents, the analysis of health and birth records over the period, implementation interviews with staff and key Trenton figures, and observation.

Friends of the Children (on-going)
This program identifies children when they are very young (first grade) and matches them with a mentor (or Friend) who provides one-on-one support and guidance for an extended period of time (twelve years). Dr. Grossman and her colleagues at P/PV have started an random assignment impact study of the program’s effects on the children’s behavior, health and well-being.

A Study of Extended-Service Schools
Dr. Grossman headed P/PV’s multi-million dollar evaluation of Wallace-Reader’s Digest’s Extended Service Schools (ESS) Initiative. This evaluation examined initiative school-based after-school programs in approximately 60 low-income neighborhood schools. Each city chose to adapt one of four national models: the Beacons model, the Community School model, United Way’s Bridges to Success model or the West Philadelphia Improvement Corps model. The evaluation examined: implementation issues around using schools as after-school care facilities and activity quality issues, the cost and financing of such programs, what types of youth participate and how, and how participation affects the youth’s attitudes, experiences and behaviors.

Practices in Mentoring
As a subcontractor to Northwest Regional Laboratory, P/PV is writing training material to be used by mentoring programs around the country. Dr. Grossman is directing this project which translates P/PV’s research findings into accessible training and technical assistance materials. P/PV is also conducting reconnaissance and documentation work of mentoring programs in specialized areas, such as faith-based mentoring programs and program for juveniles re-entering their communities.

Plain Talk Initiative on Adolescent Sexuality
Plain Talk was a neighborhood-based initiative to protect sexually active youth from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases by creating: (1) a community climate that encourages straightforward communication about responsible sexual behavior; (2) broad-based community support for use of contraception among sexually active teens; and (3) increased accessibility of contraceptive services to youth. Dr. Grossman headed the quantitative assessment of the program. She investigated how communication with adults and access to contraception affected rates of teen pregnancy, contraceptive use, knowledge and attitudes about birth control, pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases.

The State and Future of Mentoring
Dr. Grossman organized a national conference on mentoring whose purpose is to disseminate what is known about mentoring to date to policy makers, funders and researchers to stimulate interest in supporting mentoring and encourage additional work. She edited a volume resulting from the conference, Contemporary Issues in Mentoring.

The Process Through Which Mentoring Works
Together with Professor Jean Rhodes, Dr. Grossman is investigating the processes through which mentoring affects various youth outcomes, academic and antisocial. The study involves further analysis of the Big Brothers Big Sisters data sets.

The Mentoring to Scale Project
Dr. Grossman, as part of the mentoring-to-scale team, is evaluating different methods of serving more youth with mentoring programs. She has helped design the study and draw substantive conclusions.

The Boys and Girls Club’s Gang Prevention Through Targeted Outreach Program Evaluation (a multi-site evaluation)
In this initiative, Boys and Girls Clubs across the country are targeting youth ages 9 through 18 who are at risk for gang involvement and attempting to mainstream them into Boys and Girls Club culture and activities through more intensive staff interaction. Three of the 26 clubs involved in the evaluation are intervention programs that attempt to get youth out of the gangs. The other sites, the prevention sites, are enrolling high-risk youth. As part of this team, Dr. Grossman and her colleague designed a comparison group strategy to test this program, convinced funders from the private and public sector to support this evaluation, and is carrying out the multi-pronged evaluation design.

The Bridges-to-Work Demonstration
Dr. Grossman played a leading research role in planning and implementing P/PV's Bridges to Work demonstration model and research. In this role, she has helped finalize the program model that links inner-city residents with suburban jobs, designed the random assignment evaluation of a demonstration, talked to prospective operators about random assignment, helped select the demonstration sites and overseeing the evaluation in general.

The Big Brothers/Big Sisters Evaluation
Dr. Grossman helped guide the analysis and writing of the study of the volunteer applicant process, helped write the relationship formation study, and was co principal investigator on the random assignment impact evaluation. For the impact evaluation, she helped analyze the data and co authored Making a Difference: An Impact Study of Big Brothers/Big Sisters. She also was integrally involved in developing and implementing the dissemination strategy for this report.

The Voluntary Youth Serving Organization Study
Dr. Grossman provided oversight on this study of Boys and Girls Clubs, Girls Incorporated and the YMCA. She had particular input in developing the data collection strategy.

The Evaluation of the WorkPlus Demonstration
As Co-Project Director of this project, Dr. Grossman was jointly responsible for all aspects of the demonstration. This included helping to develop the program model, designing the demonstration project, writing funding proposals, designing the research, as well as providing general research oversight during the life of the project.

The Urban Corps Assessment Project
As Project Director, Dr. Grossman managed this measurement development research. The goal of the project was not only to describe these aspects of urban corps but also to develop measures of youth programmatic engagement, the quality of youth/staff relationships, and program's culture and climate that could be used to assess on programs serving young adults. She, along with the team, developed the measures, designed four survey instruments, oversaw the data collection, analyzed the data and wrote the manual.

New Directions for Youth Research and Policy Study
Based on the lessons learned over the last 25 years of youth programming, Dr. Grossman was responsible for writing a paper that proposed a new direction for youth social policy.

"I Have A Dream" Evaluation Planning Grant
Dr. Grossman was responsible for designing a quasi-experimental impact evaluation for a possible national evaluation of the I Have A Dream (IHAD) program. This task included conducting a mail survey of all IHAD programs to learn about program variation. Based on the survey possible demonstration sites were selected and recruited.

California Conservation Corps Follow-up Study
In this project, the stratified random sample of CCC participants and comparison group members were re-interviewed to investigate the impact of the CCC five to six years after enrollment. As co-principal investigator, Dr. Grossman was responsible for all aspects of the evaluation: designing the survey, analyzing the data, and writing the report.

The Summer Training and Education Program (STEP)
Dr. Grossman was co-principal investigator of this five-year random assignment demonstration designed to reduce dropout levels among economically and educationally disadvantaged youth. She developed youth survey instruments, supervised the data collection and analyzed the educational data (including school transcripts) and employment data. She provided general research oversight for the demonstration, including safeguarding the experimental design and monitoring data collection efforts. She helped authored almost all the STEP reports.

Analysis of Long Term Care Services for Persons at Risk of Institutional Placement
As principal investigator, Dr. Grossman was responsible for reanalyzing data from the National Long-Term Care Channeling demonstration to determine which subgroups of participants did the channeling program serve most cost-effectively. To do this, she examined the causes of institutionalization by subgroup and differential impact of channeling on these same subgroups.

A Study of Policy Options for Reducing Long-Term Welfare Dependency
Dr. Grossman was the co-project director and researcher on the project. The study involved determining the effects of previous employment-related programs on particular subgroups by reanalyzing existing data sets, further investigating what traits are associated with becoming long-term welfare dependent, simulating the effects of targeting various programs to alternative subgroups, and designing a demonstration that would test relevant policy options. Dr. Grossman was involved in all aspects of research with the exception of the demonstration design.

The Federal Supplemental Compensation Evaluation
As co-principal investigator, Dr. Grossman analyzed the effect of this emergency unemployment compensation program on the length of individuals' unemployment and on overall caseload characteristics. Hazard rate analysis was among the analytical techniques used in the evaluation.

Forecasting the 1984 Poverty Rate
As principal investigator, Dr. Grossman developed time-series regression models (including ARIMA error components) of the overall poverty rate and poverty rates among many groups within the population. These models were used to forecast poverty rates for 1984.

AFDC Caseload and Expenditure Projection
As principal investigator, Dr. Grossman developed national time-series forecast models of AFDC caseload and payments for both the basic AFDC program and the Unemployed-Parent AFDC program. She was also responsible for the parallel development of state-by-state forecast model.

The Simplified Application Demonstration
Dr. Grossman was task leader in simulating the effects of standardizing food stamp benefits among the AFDC population. Earlier, she also examined the characteristics of program eligibles using state case record data.

Visiting Scholar to Study the Labor Force Behavior of Immigrant Women in Sweden
As a visiting scholar at the Swedish Institute for Social Research, Dr. Grossman conducted a study of the economic integration of immigrant women in Sweden. The investigation examined and modeled the women's occupational attainment, labor force participation, and earnings.

Unemployment Studies for the Greek Government
As a consultant for the Greek Center for Economic Planning and Research, Dr. Grossman conducted two studies used as inputs to their Five-Year Plan. The first examined the worsening unemployment problem in Greece. Using their four sources of unemployment data, she investigated the demographic and sectoral composition of Greek unemployment, identifying which groups were the "problem groups" for the 1980's. The second paper was an in-depth evaluation of Greek unemployment and other labor force statistics. She identified problems with their current data collection methods and suggested improvements.

The Use of a Research Demonstration to Evaluate Policy
Dr. Grossman, at the request of the Brookdale Institute of Gerontology, prepared a paper and presented a seminar on the topic of research demonstrations: how they differ from normal programs, what are the merits of conducting research demonstration, and how the government could set up demonstrations.

Survey and Analysis of Alternative Labor Supply Models for Microsimulation
Dr. Grossman directed a study which surveyed and analyzed recent labor supply models in order to recommend the most promising model structure for dynamic microsimulation and to suggest avenues for future research.

Evaluation of the National Long Term Care Channeling Demonstration Project
Dr. Grossman was the task leader for three aspects of the National Long Term Care (NLTC) Channeling Demonstration Project. She was responsible for developing procedures for implementing the experimental design--including developing an appropriate sampling strategy and adapting the control group methodology to the NLTC project. The second task involved conducting methodological studies to detect data problems that would require more complicated analytical tools to be employed in the impact analysis. Such potential data problems include randomization breakdown, data noncomparability, and control group contamination. The third task was the development of a comprehensive data analysis framework to be used for all parts of analysis. The analytic framework includes econometric procedures to be used for dealing with problems such as attrition and self-selection bias.

The Implications of Off-Track Betting in New Jersey
As principal investigator on this study, Dr. Grossman oversaw the development and administration of a random digit dial telephone survey and an in-person field survey. The survey data were analyzed to provide projection of the demand for and the net revenues from off-track betting in New Jersey.

Positive Adjustment Assistance Project: A Demonstration Design
Dr. Grossman participated in the design of an adjustment assistance demonstration aimed at aiding workers to integrate back into the economy following a plant closing. The purpose of the demonstration was not only to institute an adjustment assistance program in needy areas, but also to evaluate what components of such a program are useful. Dr. Grossman aided in developing the research strategy and the operational aspects of the demonstration.

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