Featured Project

Health Through Housing Community Transportation Navigators Program Evaluation

ISSUE

King County Metro, as part of the County Health Through Housing initiative, was interested in evaluating the impact of Community Transit Navigators (CTN) working with residents in several transitional and emergency housing locations across the County.  A key question was whether the Navigator’s work with residents, coupled with the provision of free ORCA transit cards, would result in greater utilization of sources of public transit, which in turn might contribute to improvements in resident mobility, health and well-being.  The project built off a smaller implementation of the services directed at the Filipino community in Seattle.

SOLUTION

Data Collection from Residents at Housing Sites

Working in conjunction with Geo Education & Research, we developed an evaluation plan that included longitudinal survey data collection from residents measuring attitudes and behaviors related to public transit and other sources of transportation.  Understanding some of the challenges with the target population for the intervention, we completed on-site baseline data collection during “kick-off” events at the site where residents could obtain a free unlimited use ORCA card.  The data collection included reading the questions and interviewing many of the residents, as well as helping residents to understand specific wording and questions.  All participants received a gift card incentive for completing the survey.

About eight months later we returned to the housing locations to collect follow-up survey data from the residents.  At each time the residents provided information on the survey to generate a unique ID code that allowed us to match the surveys at the two time points.  We gathered Baseline data from 366 residents and Follow-Up data from 311 residents, and the paired sample included 109 with data at the two time points.  The analysis was important in showing some changes in resident attitudes and behaviors, and in linking these data to other sources of implementation and impact data.

Gathering Implementation Data

The evaluation team worked with the Hopelink team, who oversaw the implementation of the CTN model, on the development of an encounter form to capture information about the Navigator’s work with individual residents.  It was crucial to have the ability to link the direct work of the CTN’s and residents to outcome data such as that collected on the survey, or information from Metro about ORCA card usage.  This facet of the project involved great collaboration between the evaluation team, the Hopelink management staff and the Navigators in creating a tool that would be simple to use and capture the depth of information needed for the evaluation. 

Analysis of Metro ORCA Card Use Data

Since all residents at the time of the “kick-off” event could receive a free unlimited use ORCA card, we had the capacity to look at and individual’s transit boarding activity starting from when they first received the card.  Over the course of work at the sites, the Hopelink staff kept information about the ORCA card numbers assigned to individuals with different ID codes.  As such, we had the ability to link for many at an individual level their survey data, their encounters with the Navigator at the site and their ORCA use data.

These combined data allowed to look at patterns of transit usage across the different housing locations.  Additionally, we could look at differences in the rates of usage of different public transit sources (e.g., bus, light rail, etc.) and of alternative point-to-point transit sources such as DART, ACCESS and Metro FLEX.   Looking at the survey and ORCA card data we had the capacity to assess whether there were differences in usage patterns for different population groups defined by race, gender, age and ethnicity.  Last, the data was instrumental in helping show that residents with more Navigator encounters demonstrated more consistent and longer-term use of the ORCA card for transit activity.