Updated 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline caller experience results in more people being connected to a counselor
 Strengthening crisis care and suicide prevention infrastructure — including improving the efficacy of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (“988”) — is a high priority for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). From April to July 2023, approximately 44% of the estimated 1.8 million calls made to 988 were abandoned before the call was routed to a local call center; 11% of remaining calls were abandoned while waiting to be connected to a counselor.
We collaborated with SAMHSA and the national administrator of the 988 system to develop an intervention designed to decrease abandonment of calls by updating the caller experience. The intervention changed the message script and voice recording during the initial integrated voice response, and the script, voice recording, and music that callers hear while waiting to be connected to a counselor. We evaluated the program change with a cluster randomized trial in which 393,789 calls from 200,253 unique phone numbers were randomly assigned to hear the existing version or the updated version of the integrated voice response.
During the 4-week evaluation period the updated integrated voice response resulted in approximately 1,400 additional calls being answered by a counselor, representing a statistically significant 0.7 percentage point increase in answered calls. This effect implies that if all calls to 988 were exposed to the updated IVR over a 12-month period, reaching about 5.9 million calls, an additional 36,000 calls would be connected to a counselor.
As of January 2024, SAMHSA has implemented the updated caller experience for all callers.
Join OES as Tribal Engagement Fellow
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We’re seeking candidates who have significant expertise conducting participatory research with Native nations, expertise in the local contexts of Tribal governments, and are well versed in the principles of indigenous data sovereignty to join OES as a Tribal Engagement Fellow in FY24. This remote fellowship will run for 6 months at 50% time. |
OES and SSA evaluate the impact of evidence-based improvements to beneficiary outreach
The goals of the Social Security Administration’s Ticket to Work (TTW) program are to provide beneficiaries the choices, opportunities, and support they need to enter the workforce and maintain employment with the goal of becoming economically self-supporting over time. However, uptake remains low, with only an estimated 5% or less of eligible beneficiaries assigning a Ticket since the program began.
We collaborated with SSA on an intervention designed to increase the number of beneficiaries who “assign a Ticket” by developing evidence-based improvements to beneficiary outreach. We evaluated the impact of variations of notices sent to over 900,000 randomly assigned beneficiaries (in 3 cohorts). The notices varied by when they were sent and whether they included modifications.
Ultimately the redesigned interventions did not increase Ticket assignments in the nine months after mailings were sent, though the revised language mailings modestly increased the Helpline call rate in all cohorts.
Evaluation and Evidence Training Series
Evaluation 101: Wednesday, January 17, 2023 from 3 to 4:30pm Eastern time
Join us for an introduction to evaluation as a method to answer important questions, including what it is, what questions it can and can't answer, and how it can help agencies better understand their programs, policies, and operations.
Open to federal executive branch employees only.
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