Several Latin American countries have implemented a vocational training and apprenticeship scheme aimed specifically at young people from poor households. The Dominican Republic, though, with World Bank support, is one of the first to conduct a thorough evaluation of the impact and cost-effectiveness of the programme. A baseline survey was conducted at the moment when the young people came to register for the scheme. At this point, the sample was divided into three groups: one which received vocational and life skills training; another which received only life skills training; and a third, control, group which did not participate in the training scheme at all.

The next stages of the survey used CATI (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing) methodology. Sistemas Integrales used its data entry program LSD-2010 to design a CATI system which ensured that the distribution of the sample between interviewers was random, and that the order of the telephone calls was random. The system also kept an automatic record of all telephone call attempts, for supervision purposes. Three follow-up CATI surveys were conducted, at six-monthly intervals after the training scheme, to assess the effect of the scheme on the participants' well-being and employment prospects. The final element in the impact evaluation was a traditional, interviewer-administered survey of the young people's households.

Sistemas Integrales also contributed its expertise to a trial of four different survey methodologies using a sub-sample of the youth employment sample. This compared the reliability and cost-effectiveness of traditional paper questionnaires, either interviewer- or self-administered; CATI; and Computer-Aided Self-Interviewing with Audio. 

• < Prev
• Next >