DOI: 10.3886/e203706v1
title: Vocational Rehabilitation service receipt, service expenditures, and ruralness

description: Vocational
 Rehabilitation (VR) programs in the United States help individuals with
 disabilities find, maintain, or advance their employment outcomes. Vocational
 Rehabilitation programs vary across states and can offer services such as
 vocational assessment, counseling, training, job placement, and support.
 However, disparities exist in how services are provided to consumers,
 particularly concerning demographic factors and geographical location. This
 study analyzed data from the 2015 Rehabilitation Services Administration Case
 Service Report (RSA-911), which contains detailed information on
 demographics, disability types, VR services, and employment status for cases
 closed during the fiscal year 2015. Approximately 86% of all cases were
 included in the final study sample after data cleaning procedures, ensuring a
 comprehensive and complete analysis of the data. The analysis examined how
 distance from urban centers influences the receipt of VR services,
 controlling for sociodemographic characteristics. Results revealed that
 factors like race, age, education level, and proximity to metro areas
 significantly impact the likelihood of consumers to receive certain services
 and the overall levels of purchases of those services. For instance,
 individuals living further from urban centers were more likely to receive VR
 services directly from the VR agency itself, rather than services obtained
 through external VR providers. Moreover, disparities in how services are
 provided, or delivered, to consumers highlight the need for policies and
 procedures to address sociodemographic differences to ensure equitable access
 to VR services for all individuals.
description: Presence of Common Scales: 
 <b>Services received:</b> 
 RSA-911
 does not contain specific scales, but rather VR services delivered to
 individual consumers. For our
 analyses, we aggregated case services received into 9 categories (see table 2
 in the attached manuscript).<br><br>
 <b>County-level
 indicators: </b>
 The
 distance variable captures how far a rural (micropolitan or noncore) county
 is from the nearest metropolitan county, based on Office of Management and
 Budget (OMB) county designations. The distance measure was constructed using
 county level population centroids from the 2010 U.S. Census and the Haversine
 formula, which is commonly used to calculate the shortest distance between
 two points. Within each state, we calculated the county’s distance from every
 other county, and retained the minimum distance of a rural county from an
 urban county. For metro counties, the minimum distance is naturally zero. We
 added 1 to each distance measure for mathematical reasons. Using these data,
 we classified VR cases into three groups: (1) live under 20 miles from a
 metro office, (2) live 20 to 50 miles from a metro office, and (3) live
 greater than 50 miles from a metro office<br><br><b>
 </b><b>Distance to the VR
 office: </b>
 The
 employment ratio was constructed using employment data from the U.S. Census,
 Bureau of County Business Patterns and county-level population estimates from
 the U.S. Census, Population Division. The employment ratio for each county is
 defined as (county employment of nearest metro area/county population of
 nearest metro area) * (1/distance)
description: Approximately
 86% of all 2015 Vocational Rehabilitation cases included in the RSA-911 data
 set (n = 474,760)
description: Individuals with
disabilities seeking vocational rehabilitation services. Smallest Geographic Unit: United States
description: other;