The purpose of this study is to evaluate how service providers, clients, and graduates of a job-training program define the term self-sufficiency (SS). This community-engaged, mixed-method study qualitatively analyzes focus group data from each group and quantitatively examines survey data obtained from participants of the program. Findings reveal that psychological transformation, as a process, represents the emic definition of SS—psychological SS—but each dimension of the concept is reflected in varying degrees by group. Provider and participant views are vastly different from the outcome-driven policy and funder definitions. Implications for benchmarking psychological SS as an empowerment-based process measure of job readiness in workforce development evaluation are discussed.

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