Chestnut Global Partners (CGP) takes a scientific approach to program evaluation that examines the effectiveness of workplace interventions through empirical verification. Through our affiliation with Chestnut Health Systems' Research Institute (Lighthouse Institute), CGP has access to an extensive staff and network of professional behavioral scientists that routinely conduct federally funded applied research in the area of behavioral health prevention and treatment.
Although we recommend using the highly scientific GAIN-CGP for screening behavioral health issues and outcome monitoring, our preferred outcome measure in a program evaluation study depends completely on the aims of the customer and the unique research questions. Our objective is to use measures that maximize the sensitivity of the evaluation to detect positive effects, if they are in fact present. Unlike the non-scientific evaluations that are commonplace in EAP and tied to popular or proprietary measures, we focus on measures that stand the best chance of actually responding to changes central to the program or intervention being evaluated. We have also developed a valid and short "Suite" of Workplace Outcome Measures that many EAPs and related programs are using as pre/post measurement tools.
We may be the only EAP provider who takes a true empirical approach, rather than a “program justification” approach, regarding the return on investment (ROI) question by evaluating the program investment relative to the empirical effects demonstrated by the evaluation study. CGP could conduct these kinds of ROI studies by using an internet-based questionnaire to collect self-report data from employees to study simple effectiveness relative to costs. These data can also be linked to insurance claims records to examine the capacity of the program to impact health care costs, health care utilization, or other workplace variables of interest.