The Better Government Lab at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University has developed a new scale for measuring the experience of burden when accessing public benefits. They offer both a three-item scale and a single-item scale, which can be utilized for any public benefit program. The shorter scales provide a less burdensome way to measure by requiring less information from users.
Through our research understanding the government digital service field and what workers in this field need, we want to help strengthen those existing roles and establish more pathways for promotion and career support, as well as help other teams recognize the value of these skills and create new roles.
This study examines how bureaucratic interactions differ among public assistance programs—WIC, SNAP, and Medicaid—highlighting variations in participant experiences and the psychological costs associated with each.
This research summary presents findings from a randomized controlled trial demonstrating how mRelief’s simplified SNAP application significantly increases application rates among eligible individuals.
This resource provides examples and practical guides that explain how to use existing regulations and data sharing agreements to transfer client information or eligibility status between benefit programs.
Accounting for the strong effects of health care access, this study finds that SNAP is associated with reduced hospitalization in dually eligible older adults. Policies to increase SNAP participation and benefit amounts in eligible older adults may reduce hospitalizations and health care costs for older dual eligible adults living in the community.
This paper examines three key questions in participatory HCI: who initiates, directs, and benefits from user participation; in what forms it occurs; and how control is shared with users, while addressing conceptual, ethical, and pragmatic challenges, and suggesting future research directions.
This paper analyzes the unique challenges of conducting participatory design in large-scale public projects, focusing on stakeholder management, fostering engagement, and integrating participatory methods into institutional transformation.
This resource is a research paper examining the role of the public safety net in insuring job losers against income loss, analyzing which government programs provide financial support and how benefits vary based on pre-job loss income levels.
This study examines how providing information about administrative burden influences public support for government programs like TANF, showing that awareness of these burdens can increase favorability toward the programs and their recipients.
