Ongoing Initiative
What Works: testing youth employment interventions
Working in partnership to develop clear and robust evidence on what works to help young people find and keep good work.
The system challenge
There isn’t enough evidence on what truly helps marginalised young people find good jobs. To create a more effective system, we need to invest in proven solutions that work.
Our aim
To build a stronger evidence base by testing employment programmes and improve national understanding of what really makes a difference for young people.
What are we doing?
We evaluate promising and established services that support young people to overcome multiple barriers into good employment.
Programme phases
We know that organisations vary in their capacity to engage with robust impact evaluations.
We run three stages of partnership based on programme maturity and evaluation readiness:
1. Development
Read more about 1. DevelopmentFor promising programmes that require support and development to become ready for an impact evaluation. This may include reviewing a theory of change.
2. Impact Pilot
Read more about 2. Impact PilotFor established or high-quality programmes where evaluators will test through an observational pilot study and feasibility for a future experimental evaluation.
3. Impact Efficacy
Read more about 3. Impact EfficacyFor programmes ready to undertake a full impact evaluation such as a Randomised Controlled Trial, Quasi-Experimental Design or alternative high-quality method
Delivery partners can progress through these phases, or start at impact phases, depending on feasibility potential.
Our approach
Our approach builds on the Treasury’s Magenta Book, guided by realist insights and underpinned by programme theory so that at every opportunity, we can start to understand the causal drivers of change and outcomes.
