Network meta-analysis of employment and skills interventions

Summary

Youth Futures Foundation commissioned the Centre for Evidence and Implementation, the Institute for Employment Studies and Monash University to conduct a rapid evidence assessment examining six types of youth employment interventions.

Insights were used to inform the development of a Youth Employment Toolkit.

Approach

The REA assessed the effectiveness of some common constituent components of employment and skills programmes designed to assist young people to enter the labour market in high-income countries.

It followed a pre-established protocol, which is available on Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/8w79s (Ott et al., 2022).

Data from the included studies were quantitatively synthesised using a network meta-analysis (NMA) approach. NMA is a statistical technique that can be used to quantitatively synthesise the results from multiple studies that aim to achieve similar outcomes by combining direct and indirect evidence in a network. Most of the studies included in this review evaluated programmes that consisted of multiple components.

Research questions

1. What combination of components should an employment and skills programme have in order to be effective at supporting young people to enter paid employment?
2. What combination of components should an employment and skills programme have in order to be effective at supporting young people to complete educational qualifications?

Included studies

• 60 studies, reported in 73 publications
• 32 used a randomised study design, 28 used non-randomised design
• Two-thirds (n=40) were conducted in the United States, a third (n =20) in Europe and 1 in Australia

Insights

This review found that some components of employment and skills programmes — namely off-the-job training — can have a moderate impact on improving employment outcomes for young people who are not in employment, education or training.

The effect of some programme components is amplified considerably when they are provided to young people who report facing additional barriers, suggesting that there is benefit in targeting these components to particular populations.

There are numerous opportunities for future research to strengthen the
evidence base, particularly by undertaking primary research outside the United States.

There are also opportunities to repeat and extend the methods used in this review to provide additional insights on the impact of other components of employment and skills programmes.