EAP Research

Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) have been extensively adopted and maintained by employers due to the widely held perception that they yield positive benefits and effects. However, the commercial success of Employee Assistance (EA) over the past three decades has not been accompanied by an increase in scientific evaluation of EA as a program offering or a workplace intervention.

The highly competitive EAP marketplace and proprietary nature of EAP data, combined with other practical obstacles in conducting research in applied EAP settings, has resulted in a paucity of rigorous empirical studies and small numbers of researchers engaged in EA research. The EA field has not produced research on a level commensurate with its involvement in providing professional helping services to millions of workers that make up the workforce, both in the United States and abroad.

Although some studies suggest EAPs are generally effective, the EAP evidence base leaves many questions unanswered. In part this is due to common methodological limitations; for example, the literature is dominated by single case studies and by program evaluations that do not always meet rigorous scientific standards. Although there has been an impressive accumulation of program evaluations undertaken by employers (and their EA providers or consultants), most of these evaluations have been considered proprietary and not widely disseminated or published in scholarly journals. In addition, there is a need for additional research focused on contemporary EA service delivery models since this has changed dramatically over the years, on specifically examining the “active ingredients” in EAP effectiveness, and on measuring outcomes of most relevance to employers and workers.

There is a growing consensus that to maximize the usefulness of EA services to employers, employees and dependents, we need to build a stronger research base. Evidence-based purchasing of benefits involves assessing meaningful data and outcome measures to help guide decisions about resource allocation and employee benefits. The Foundation was formed as a catalyst to build an improved empirical research base for EA services.