Rural and Urban Differences in VR Caseloads and Delivery Practices
Catherine Ipsen, Grant Swicegood, Kyle Colling, Bethany Rigles, Charles Asp · The Mathematics Enthusiast · 2014
Each year, Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) agencies provide case level data to the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA). This compiled data, named RSA 911, includes consumer characteristics, services provided, and employment outcomes of all case closures in the past year. Researchers and program evaluators use the RSA 911 data system to examine productivity across agencies, demographic and disability groups, and other service factors. The RSA 911 does not include information about where the consumer was served, such as county or zip code. This limits outcome evaluation for various geographies. For instance, while VR programs can be evaluated or compared across states, more micro-level analyses cannot be performed. This has implications for making service delivery improvements in rural communities since the majority of cases originate from urban locations and practice recommendations may become skewed towards improving the urban case mix. To address this shortcoming, we compiled 2008 and 2009 RSA 911 data with geographic indicators from 47 VR agencies, including 17 general, 11 blind/low vision, and 19 combined (general/blind) programs. This factsheet reports on demographic and services outcome differences based on rural and urban location.