Youth Employment Programme

Guide on Measuring Decent Jobs for Youth: Monitoring, evaluation and learning in labour market programmes

The guide offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the topics of results measurement and impact assessment, their practical application in the youth employment field and how evidence created via results measurement strategies can lead to improved programming.

Instructional material | ILO Geneva | 02 May 2018
Overview

Note 1: Diagnosing, planning and designing youth employment interventions
This section guides readers through the key steps in designing youth employment interventions. An employment diagnostic analysis can inform programme planners about the specific barriers to employment both across economic sectors and subgroups of youth. The note then provides guidance on how to select an intervention to tackle these constraints using a menu of Active Labour Market Programmes as a starting point to determine objectives and outcome.

Note 2: Concepts and definitions of employment indicators relevant for young people
The objective of this note is to assist readers to choose appropriate outcome measures of their youth employment interventions. Readers can choose from a menu of decent work indicators, depending on the context and objectives of the particular project. The menu of youth employment indicators is broken down into four key dimensions: employment opportunities, employment quality, employment access and employment skills.

Note 3: Establishing a monitoring system
This note summarizes the key steps for building a results based monitoring system for youth employment programmes. This includes guidance on visualizing a theory of change, defining a results chain and collecting, analysing and reconciling findings. The chapter includes innovations for technology powered M&E and lean data collection tools.

Note 4: Enhancing youth programme learning through evaluation
This note discusses potential motivations for conducting evaluations, including an overview of key knowledge gaps in youth employment, before introducing the reader to evaluation criteria and how to derive relevant evaluation questions. It gives an overview of performance and impact evaluation as well as cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses.

Note 5: Impact evaluation methods for youth employment interventions
This note first explores the fundamental impact evaluation question: “How can we show that the changes in outcomes we see result from our youth employment intervention?” and explains the theory behind methods that aim at establishing a clear cause and effect link, also known as attribution. The note to provide youth employment practitioners with an overview of the different tools available for an impact evaluation and discusses the features of certain evaluation designs which are particularly relevant for youth employment projects.

Note 6: A step-by-step guide to impact evaluation
This note is a step-by-step guide to implementing an impact evaluation for a youth employment interventions. The note will help to plan an impact evaluation from the programme perspective, from preparation, timeline and budget, data collection, programme implementation and finally the dissemination of evaluation results.

Note 7: Evidence uptake in policy formulation
This note guides readers on how to ensure the results of their youth employment evaluation can inform the formulation of pro-employment policy frameworks. This can be achieved by ensuring research questions are relevant through engagement with constituents; communicating research effectively; and synthesising and repackaging research for different audiences.