Vocational rehabilitation services and employment for SSDI beneficiaries with visual impairments (Giesen & Hierholzer, 2015)

The study used a nonexperimental design to determine the types of Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) services that would lead to more competitive employment outcomes for VR participants who were B/VI and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) beneficiaries. Sample data were obtained from the Rehabilitation Services Administration's (RSA) 911 report for fiscal year 2011, an administrative dataset collected by each state VR agency on consumers they serve. Eligible participants included individuals who were B/VI, who were living in the United States and received SSDI benefits in the 2011 fiscal year, and who were between the ages of 18 and 75.  

Individuals in the study sample were predominantly white (65%) and over half were male (55%) with an average age of 47. The group under analysis received VR services through their local VR agency. The administrative dataset identified whether the participant was competitively employed according to the RSA's definition and identified 22 available services that a participant may have received such as on-the-job training or interpreter services. The dataset also contained participant demographic information (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity) and state or agency information (e.g., state unemployment rate, agency structure type) that were used as control variables during analyses. The authors used statistical models to determine which groups of services and which individual services predicted competitive employment outcomes for VR program participants who were B/VI.