Frequently Asked Questions

The Pathways Clearinghouse maintains a list of services that we use to characterize interventions and conduct analyses. This list is located on the website within Find Interventions that Work, under the filter “Select services the intervention should provide.” The list nests some of the services underneath other services, to show services that are part of a broader service category. A version of the list is also included  in the Protocol for the Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse: Methods and Standards. Interventions can offer any combination of the services on the list, and any of the services listed may be primary services. As the Pathways Clearinghouse continues to expand, other services may be added to the list.

Pathways Clearinghouse meta-analyses currently combine groups of closely related services from the list to produce a meaningful number of studies for analyses based on a group of services. Those groups are used as part of analyses to determine what types of services are associated with better outcomes. For example, What Works to Improve Employment and Earning for People with Low Incomes combines education and training services and compares the effectiveness of these services to other types of services, such as work and work-based learning and incentives and sanctions.

Evidence Snapshots are short briefs on the effectiveness of interventions that have a specific primary service. In some cases, a single Evidence Snapshot will summarize the effectiveness of interventions that provide either of two closely-related primary services. For instance, the Work Experience and Work-Based Learning Snapshot reports on interventions with primary services of work and work-based learning or work experience because these are two similar service strategies. 

The Pathways Clearinghouse created a list of potential services and uses that list across the website and products. Some services are nested within other services. For example, occupational or sectoral training is nested within training, because it represents a type of training. The higher-level category of training includes other types of training, in addition to occupational or sectoral training. If you are interested in understanding the range of interventions that feature training, your search will identify interventions that include occupational and sectoral training, as well as other types of training. All potential services on the website can be the primary service.

Employment and training interventions commonly provide light-touch supports—such as money or vouchers for child care or transportation—to address barriers to training or work. The Pathways Clearinghouse categorizes these kinds of services as “supportive services,” because they are explicitly designed to support employment and training. The Pathways Clearinghouse also reviews interventions that may improve labor-market outcomes through strategies other than employment and training services, including by addressing barriers to work through provision of intensive housing, child care, or legal assistance services. The Pathways Clearinghouse categorizes these types of services as “housing,” “child care,” or “legal assistance” services to indicate that the supports are more intensive and occur outside the context of an employment and training program. The Pathways Clearinghouse added these services tags during the third round of review, which spanned 2021 and 2022—and conducted a targeted re-review of studies previously included in the Pathways Clearinghouse to determine if the “housing,” “child care,” or “legal assistance” services tags should be applied.

An effectiveness rating assesses whether an intervention is likely to produce favorable results if faithfully replicated with a similar population. Outcome domains with well-supported ratings are those that the evidence suggests are most likely to improve if an intervention were replicated with a similar population. Outcome domains with supported ratings have some evidence that the intervention improves them, but the evidence is less conclusive. Outcome domains that receive a rating of not supported have strong or consistent evidence that the intervention is unlikely to produce favorable effects.

However, because implementation challenges and successes often vary and no two implementations of an intervention are identical, the well-supported and supported ratings do not guarantee success.

The Pathways Clearinghouse reports implementation details for interventions with at least one outcome domain that has a well-supported or supported rating across the 10 outcome domains (increasing earnings, increasing employment, or decreasing benefit receipt in the short, long, or very long term, or increasing education and training). We focus on well-implemented interventions with supported outcomes because practitioners and decision makers might be interested in learning more about how to implement these interventions.

The Pathways Clearinghouse identifies and reviews relevant studies, including impact, descriptive, and implementation studies, to collect details on how an intervention was implemented. We summarize information such as the amount of services received, the number of staff delivering services, and costs and benefits. For each intervention summary, we identify a key informant, who is usually the lead author on one or more of the studies. We share the draft implementation summary with the key informant to ensure accuracy and clarity. During their review, the key informant might provide additional information or suggest edits. Therefore, although the majority of information comes from the studies cited on the study pages associated with each intervention, some of the details come directly from exchanges with a key informant.

Studies with low quality ratings demonstrate little evidence that findings are attributable, in part or in full, to the intervention examined. A low quality rating suggests that there is a high risk of bias. The Pathways Clearinghouse focuses on providing detailed information for studies rated high or moderate quality because these studies have a lower risk of bias, and these interventions are more likely to have contributed to the reported outcomes. In other words, the Pathways Clearinghouse focuses on well-implemented studies because they provide the most relevant, useful information for practitioners and decision makers.

Begin by going to Find Interventions that Work, and use the "Select the settings" filter on the left under the heading "Limit results to interventions implemented: In urban or rural settings."

If you select "Rural only", the search will return interventions that have only been tested in rural settings plus those that have been tested in multiple studies and at least one of those studies occurred in an exclusively rural setting.

However, consider expanding your search to include interventions that were tested in multiple settings; a category that can include rural settings. Some interventions may have been tested and implemented in rural settings, but the study findings were not disaggregated by rural versus non-rural settings, so they will not be included in the "Rural only" search results. For example, a study may have tested an intervention throughout the state of Texas, which includes rural, urban, and suburban areas. To capture interventions like these, expand your search to include "Tested in multiple settings." This will provide a more comprehensive list of interventions relevant to rural settings.