Analyzing Relationships Between Disability, Rehabilitation, and Work

Objective

The Social Security Administration’s (SSA’s) Analyzing Relationships between Disability, Rehabilitation and Work (ARDRAW) Small Grant Program is a one-year $10,000 stipend program awarded to graduate-level students to conduct supervised independent research designed to foster new analysis of work, rehabilitation, and disability issues, which may develop innovative and fresh perspectives on disability. ARDRAW focuses on research relevant to SSA’s work incentives and employment supports – specifically rehabilitation, work, and the disability program.

Potential research areas of inquiry include, but are not limited to:

• Working conditions of SSA beneficiaries
• Work accommodations and needs of SSA beneficiaries
• Non-competitive employment for SSA beneficiaries
• Vocational and other types of service use by SSA beneficiaries
• Non-SSA assistance provided to SSA beneficiaries

Status

We are in the process of soliciting for a new grant manager and are working on the Request for Applications (RFA). We hope to have the RFA completed, reviewed, and published to Grants.gov by Spring 2024 and a new grant manager awarded by the end of Summer 2024.

We are also in the process of migrating the ARDRAW information from the old site that was maintained by our former program manager, Policy Research Associates, Inc. (PRA, Inc.) to a new, internal to SSA site.  PRA, Inc. has agreed to keep their site up until we get ours up and going. You can view the current site at the following link https://www.prainc.com/12-years-ardraw/.

Current and completed ARDRAW projects can be found at the following link: https://www.ssa.gov/disabilityresearch/ardraw-projects.htm