Challenges, Findings, and Lessons Learned from the \u201cYouth employment partnerSHIP\u201d Project: An Evaluation of the EU Youth Guarantee Initiative<\/p>\n
This article was produced as part of our Guide\u2019s collaboration with ASVAPP<\/a>, the Association for the Development of Public Policy Evaluation and Analysis. The article was edited by Gaia Testore<\/strong> and Fabio Sandrolini<\/strong>. We would like to thank Iga Magda (IBS<\/a>), Claudia Villosio (CCA<\/a>), and Massimiliano Deidda (INAPP<\/a>) for their contributions to reconstructing the dynamics of the project and the obstacles encountered. <\/p>\n Assessing the effectiveness of interventions is one of the most complex tasks common to European projects, European programs, and public policies. In each of these areas\u2014 however distinct they may be<\/a>\u2014there are very similar challenges and difficulties. <\/p>\n National and European authorities\u2014as well as many European projects\u2014support initiatives aimed at helping younger generations enter the labor market. Which of these initiatives have proven effective? Which ones have been most successful in providing support to economically inactive young people? And what are their key characteristics? <\/p>\n These are the typical questions that arise in a<\/strong> policy effectiveness evaluation process<\/strong>: in this specific case, those related to what are known as\u201cactive labor market policies<\/a>.\u201d These are the same kinds of questions that come up when evaluating a European project. <\/p>\n This challenge was taken up by the Youth Employment partnerSHIP<\/a> project: an international initiative funded bythe EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Youth Employment<\/a>, which has taken a closer look at certain active labor market policy measures promoted under the European Youth Guarantee program.<\/p>\n The project focused on four European countries with high rates of youth unemployment<\/strong> (Italy, Poland, Spain, and Hungary), with the aim of assessing the effectiveness of the interventions implemented by Youth Guarantee<\/a>: an EU initiative designed to promote youth employment and combat the NEET phenomenon in countries with high youth unemployment rates (> 25%).<\/p>\n This project is not funded by the European Union, but by a fund<\/a> established bythe EEA<\/a> (European Economic Area) countries and Norway, in which Italian organizations<\/a> can participate only indirectly as partners; however, it offers an interesting insight into the challenges of evaluation<\/strong> as applied to European programs.<\/p>\n For those interested in learning more about the operational aspects of monitoring and evaluation in European projects, or in hearing about other experiences, we recommend:<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The first lesson learned concerns communication within the project and the management of international partnerships.<\/p>\n The project featured a well-structured and highly qualified partnership<\/a>. The partners and the lead partner represented centers of excellence in labor policy analysis in Poland (IBS<\/a>, lead partner), Italy (INAPP<\/a> and CCA<\/a>), Spain (FEDEA<\/a> and EHU<\/a>), and Hungary (Budapest Institute<\/a>), and could count on high-level supporting partners (NFF<\/a>, PSE<\/a>, and the World Bank<\/a>). <\/p>\n Nevertheless, managing the project proved challenging due to a combination of factors: the COVID-19 health crisis, the need to establish a \u201cremote\u201d partnership,<\/strong> and the lack of significant prior experience in collaboration<\/strong> among the project partners.<\/p>\n Experience has confirmed that in-person relationships and meetings<\/strong> remain irreplaceable: building a climate of trust is essential to ensuring fruitful communication and collaboration, and to effectively overcoming the technical and operational challenges of the project. As the project manager emphasized, meeting in person makes all the difference in the success of an international collaboration. It is important to allocate resources and time for in-person meetings<\/strong>, especially when projects are aimed at producing shared outcomes and fostering mutual learning. <\/p>\n External communication<\/strong>\u2014and in particular, the dissemination of project outcomes\u2014is also a key factor both during and beyond the project\u2019s life cycle. One of the most substantial outcomes of the international partnership has been to complement the production of empirical evidence on the effectiveness of various types of actions implemented under the Youth Guarantee with the publication and dissemination of guidelines and lessons learned<\/strong> from the transnational experience, which are available through a dedicated library<\/a>. <\/p>\n In disseminating the results of the evaluation, the researchers found that, among the various materials produced, webinars, guidelines, and downloadable manuals<\/strong> on conducting counterfactual analyses proved to be the most popular tools and had the greatest impact on policymakers compared to longer and more complex papers and joint publications.<\/p>\n The second lesson learned concerns the accessibility and comparability of the data collected, which is a recurring obstacle<\/strong> in European projects and evaluation activities. Different administrative systems produce different data, and it takes a great deal of work and time to \u201cclean\u201d it up so it can be used: an essential task that is often underestimated when planning project timelines. <\/p>\n From a methodological standpoint, the core of the Youth Employment partnerSHIP<\/a> project lay precisely in the use of large-scale administrative data<\/strong>\u2014such as unemployment registries and social security data\u2014to design counterfactual evaluation designs in all participating countries (Poland, Spain, Italy, and Hungary). This methodological approach makes it possible to track young people\u2019s pathways into and out of the labor market and to rigorously estimate the effects of the policies under study, but it is not without technical challenges. <\/p>\n Researchers from Youth Employment PartnerSHIP found that data accessibility<\/strong> and collection methods<\/strong> vary greatly from country to country. For example, in Hungary it was possible to cross-reference unemployment records with social security records, but this was not possible in Poland, leading to significant discrepancies in income calculations and data comparability. <\/p>\n The discrepancies regarding Italy<\/strong> were even more significant. In the other three countries, it was possible to conduct parallel analyses by focusing on initiatives launched within the framework of the Youth Guarantee; however, in Italy, there was no database that would allow the data to be unambiguously linked to the Youth Guarantee program. To overcome this structural obstacle, the Italian team chose to focus the analysis on interventions similar to those implemented under the Youth Guarantee, even though they were carried out outside the program. These were different measures not specifically targeted at young people, but for which it was possible to observe their impact on this specific demographic. It was thus decided to study the effects on young people of the financial incentives for permanent employment introduced by Laws 190\/2014<\/a> (on the flat-rate allowance) and 183\/2014<\/a> (on the \u201ccontract with increasing protections\u201d). <\/p>\n This example illustrates how difficulties related to data accessibility and comparability can impact the activities of a project and an evaluation exercise. The solution to the problem made it possible to find an alternative and robust approach to the analysis, allowing Italy to actively contribute relevant data and results to the research\u2014but it required time and effort. <\/p>\n The project offers two important insights into the use of data in European projects. First, it is advisable to verify the granularity<\/strong> (that is, the level of detail with which information is collected and stored in a database) and the accessibility of administrative data<\/strong> before agreeing with partners on an analysis or research activity. Second, it is necessary to allow ample time for data cleaning<\/strong>, which often takes longer than the analysis itself. <\/p>\n This publication<\/a> provides a detailed account of the work carried out by Italian researchers.<\/p>\n As for the results of the analyses, the studies have shown that although youth unemployment is a widespread problem, it takes different forms depending on the country: in Italy and Spain, young people find work more easily, but often only with temporary and precarious contracts; in Hungary and Poland, on the other hand, young people face significant barriers to entering the workforce.<\/p>\n The analyses yielded some important findings that will be useful to those responsible for designing initiatives aimed at helping the younger generation enter the labor market:<\/p>\n This evidence leads to the final major lesson learned from Youth employment partnerSHIP<\/em>: To be truly effective, interventions must be tailored to specific beneficiary groups<\/strong>, avoiding generic solutions that risk overlooking the barriers to access, characteristics, and challenges faced by the various groups involved\u2014particularly the most vulnerable groups<\/a> and young women workers<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Challenges, Findings, and Lessons Learned from the \u201cYouth employment partnerSHIP\u201d Project: An Evaluation of the EU Youth Guarantee Initiative<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":42747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[731,2189],"tags":[2314,2333],"class_list":["post-42746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive-archive","category-archive-stories","tag-experiences","tag-sector-youth-and-mobility"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Evaluating the Effectiveness of Interventions: A Shared Challenge<\/h2>\n
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Communication and Partner Relationships: An Ally in Managing Complexity<\/h2>\n
Data Comparability: An Obstacle to Overcome Through Dedication and Vision<\/h2>\n
Planning Interventions: Staying Focused on a Target<\/h2>\n
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