Southwestern Pennsylvania Young Adult Survey

Understanding pathways to opportunity for young people in the ten-county Pittsburgh region

Experienced industrial engineer working with 2 younger mentors.

Photo by Dmytro Sheremeta/Adobestock

RAND is conducting a new, five-year study of young adults in southwestern Pennsylvania to help local leaders better understand young adults’ experiences, goals, and needs.

Funded by The Heinz Endowments, The Southwestern Pennsylvania Young Adult Survey will engage with participants as they move through education, training, and employment. Participants will complete surveys about

education and training
work and employment
goals for the future
experiences and challenges during young adulthood.

Southwestern Pennsylvania Young Adult Survey. Amotola

Understanding Young Adults’ Experiences

Young adults’ experiences should help shape the programs and investments intended to support them. Their perspectives, gathered through this survey, will help ensure that future efforts reflect the realities of young people’s lives.

The survey findings will help

identify factors that can disconnect young adults from school, training, or work
inform programs and investments that expand opportunity across the region
help local leaders and funders direct resources where they are needed most.

Who Can Participate?

You may be eligible if you are between the ages of 18 to 24 and live in one of these ten counties:

Allegheny
Armstrong
Beaver
Butler
Fayette
Greene
Indiana
Lawrence
Washington
Westmoreland

Read our FAQs to learn more about the survey

Project Advisory Committee

We are deeply grateful for the guidance and support of our Project Advisory Committee, whose members bring a wealth of expertise and firsthand knowledge to this work.

The committee includes representatives from local and state government, community-based organizations, local and national philanthropies, community colleges, universities, workforce development boards, and the business community, including many who work directly with young people every day.

Representatives on the committee include individuals from the following organizations:

Allegheny County Department of Human Services
Allegheny County Economic Development
New Brighton Area School District
Henry L. Hillman Foundation
Partner4Work
Pennsylvania State Board of Higher Education
Pittsburgh Gateways
The Pew Charitable Trusts
The Pittsburgh Promise
The Rockefeller Foundation
Trade Institute of Pittsburgh
United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania
University of Pittsburgh School of Education
The Way Community Center of Greene County
Westmoreland County Community College

Project Team

Beverly Weidmer
Senior Survey Director

Beverly Weidmer is a senior survey director in the Survey Research Group at RAND. She has more than 25 years of experience in both quantitative and qualitative research methods, including all aspects of survey design and management, instrument development, focus groups, cognitive interviews, and usability testing. She specializes in the design and implementation of complex field projects including longitudinal surveys, multi-mode data collection, and surveying difficult-to-reach populations (immigrants, low literate populations, welfare recipients, the elderly, and children and adolescents). Weidmer has managed surveys at both the local and national level, including school-based studies that involved principal, teacher, parent, and student surveys as well as classroom observations. In addition, she has managed longitudinal surveys of children's health involving the collection of anthropometric measurements, various measures of child development, and quality of life studies for patients with chronic illnesses.
Brian Phillips
Policy Researcher

Brian Phillips is a policy researcher at RAND in Pittsburgh. His research focuses on education, workforce development, labor markets, and economic policy. Recent projects have included analyses of pathways into postsecondary education and the workforce including dual enrollment and career and technical education programs; educational program evaluations utilizing experimental, quasi-experimental, and mixed (quantitative/qualitative) methods; and analyses of a diverse array of workforces in the public and private sectors including a set of projects focused on the Pittsburgh region. Phillips currently co-leads the Southwestern Pennsylvania Young Adult Survey as well as analyses of workforce-focused dual enrollment pathways in rural North Carolina as part of the National Rural Higher Education Research Center. Prior to joining RAND, Phillips worked for several committees of the U.S. Congress, most recently serving as a senior policy advisor for the Joint Economic Committee. He earned his M.P.A. in economics and public policy from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
Claude Messan Setodji
Senior Statistician

Claude Messan Setodji is a senior statistician at RAND in Pittsburgh. He is a former associate research department director for the Department of Economics, Sociology, and Statistics at RAND. His research interests include the applications of statistics to public policy, causal inference, data reduction and visualization. He has done work in value-added modeling approaches for teacher and school accountability, quality of childcare centers and childcare development as well as the quality of health care in the United States. He also has interest in international education and health care policy. Setodji received his Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Minnesota in 2003.
Jennie W. Wenger
Senior Economist

Jennie W. Wenger is a senior economist at RAND, where she studies education and training, compensation, and industrial policy. Much of her current research focuses on disconnected youth (those aged 18–24 who are not engaged in education, training, or employment). She has also led work examining the effectiveness of a program for at-risk high school students, the Post-9/11 GI Bill, the effects of working conditions on Coast Guard personnel, how demographic trends will affect the militaries of the United States and China, as well as industrial policy. Before joining RAND, she was a senior research scientist and project manager at CNA, where she authored a series of reports examining the relationship between body fat and performance in the enlisted military and documenting military dependents' educational experiences. Wenger received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Melanie Zaber
Senior Economist

Melanie Zaber is a senior economist in RAND's Pittsburgh office. She is co-director of the RAND Lowy Family Middle-Class Pathways Center. Zaber is trained as a labor economist and postsecondary education researcher, and has combined those domains at RAND into studying how pathway choices translate into labor market and life outcomes. Among other topics, she has studied the workforce implications of AI, household transitions (coresidence, marriage, divorce, bankruptcy), workforce pipelines, postsecondary finance, and the returns to various credentials (certificates, licenses, certifications). Her Pittsburgh work includes an analysis of film tax credits and a study of the region's sci-tech workforce ecosystem. She received her Ph.D. in economics and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University.