Long-Term Impacts of Promotor Engagement

This report analyzes the results of a five-year follow-up survey given to participants in a randomized control trial (RCT) of the Latin American Youth Center’s Promotor Pathway program. A 2016 Urban Institute1 report describes the Promotor Pathway program and the development, implementation, and 18-month impacts of the RCT. A subsequent Ewald & Wasserman technical brief2 describes the implementation of the follow-up survey between June 2016 and June 2019 and the availability of data from the original study cohorts. Between April 2010 and February 2013, the RCT recruited a study sample of 476 youth and randomly assigned them to treatment and control groups. The follow-up survey collected data from 188 study participants. After adjusting for participants who could not be located or were unable to take the survey for various reasons, the survey had a treatment group response rate of 71%, a control group response rate of 63%, and an overall response rate of 66%. The final data set that was analyzed for this report had 186 participants, 39% from the treatment group and 61% from the control group. At the time of their entry into the study, participating youth were 16 to 22 years old. The Promotor Pathway program was designed to serve youth up to age 24, so all study participants could have been served for a minimum of two years before they aged out of the program. At the time of the follow-up survey, participants would have been 22 to 28 years old. This context underscores the need to interpret the five-year follow-up analyses differently than the 18-month impact study. Participants’ parenting status illustrates this point. Follow-up data show that treatment group participants were slightly more likely to have children (56% compared to 51%) and had the same size families as the control group (1.7 children). However, treatment group participants appeared more likely to have delayed having children while working with a Promotor. At the five-year follow up, their children were an average of five months younger than the children of control group participants (4.3 compared to 4.8 years old). This difference may have originated with participants’ parenting status at the time of their initial randomization, as the first child of treatment group participants was four months younger than the first child of control group participants. However, this difference nearly doubled for the second child: treatment group participants waited an average of 2.1 years before having a second child, compared to 1.2 years for the control group. Delaying parenthood or a second child may reflect a broader pattern of attitudes and behaviors that helped Promotor Pathway youth take control of their futures.