Urban Institute

About: Urban Institute is a nonprofit organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Medicaid & Population. The organization has 927 authors who have published 2330 publications receiving 86426 citations.

Measuring the impacts of community development initiatives: a new application of the adjusted interrupted time-series method.

Abstract: The authors contribute to the development of empirical methods for measuring the impacts of place-based local development strategies by introducing the adjusted interrupted time-series (AITS) approach. It estimates a more precise counterfactual scenario, thus offering a stronger basis for drawing causal inferences about impacts. The authors applied the AITS approach to three community development initiatives using single-family home prices as the outcome indicator and found that it could measure impacts on both the base level of prices and the rate of price appreciation. The authors also found a situation in which the method appears unreliable, however. The AITS approach benefits from more recurrent data on outcomes during the pre-and post-intervention periods, with an intertemporal pattern that avoids great volatility. The AITS approach to measuring effects of community development initiatives holds strong promise, with caveats.

Counting High School Graduates when Graduates Count: Measuring Graduation Rates under the High Stakes of NCLB.

Abstract: This report seeks to inform the on-going debate over high school graduation rates with particular attention to the ways in which No Child Left Behind has effectively both redirected attention toward graduation rates and reshaped the contours of that debate. We begin by briefly introducing the provisions of NCLB that pertain to high school graduation and discussing their implications from a measurement perspective. Next we present several distinctive strategies for developing a high school graduation indicator that are broadly consistent with the new federal requirements for accountability. In the empirical portion of this study we construct these proposed high school graduation indicators using information from the U.S. Department of Education's census of local educational agencies and schools and systematically compare the results generated by the respective measures. We conclude by discussing several lessons this study may offer for future research and the policy implications for measuring graduation rates under conditions of high-stakes accountability.

Behavioral Adaptation and Late-Life Disability: A New Spectrum for Assessing Public Health Impacts

Abstract: Objectives. To inform public health efforts to promote independent functioning among older adults, we have provided new national estimates of late-life disability that explicitly recognize behavioral adaptations.Methods. We analyzed the 2011 National Health and Aging Trends Study, a study of Medicare enrollees aged 65 years and older (n = 8077). For 7 mobility and self-care activities we identified 5 hierarchical stages—fully able, successful accommodation with devices, activity reduction, difficulty despite accommodations, and receipt of help—and explored disparities and associations with quality of life measures.Results. Among older adults, 31% were fully able to complete self-care and mobility activities. The remaining groups successfully accommodated with devices (25%), reduced their activities (6%), reported difficulty despite accommodations (18%), or received help (21%). With successive stages, physical and cognitive capacity decreased and symptoms and multimorbidity increased. Successful accommodat...