Evaluation Design Options for the Long-Term Care Registered Apprenticeship Program

This report is the final deliverable of a joint project sponsored ASPE/HHS and U.S. Department of Labor to assess the feasibility of conducting a rigorous evaluation of the LTC RAP. This analysis evaluates possible research designs to evaluate the Long-Term Care Registered Apprenticeship Program (LTC RAP) administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. It provides background on the LTC RAP. The report discusses the key research questions that should be addressed by an evaluation of the LTC RAP. It also discusses some characteristics of the program that are particularly important in considering evaluation research designs. The report also discusses a wide range of possible research designs, briefly assessing their advantages and disadvantages, and describes in detail four complementary research designs that could be used to evaluate the LTC RAP. It concludes with an analysis of the main evaluation designs to evaluate the LTC RAP. This report builds on two previous papers on the LTC RAP conducted by RTI International and the Urban Institute under this contract. [75 PDF pages]