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For most of the developing world, microenterprises are a key source of income and employment creation. For many countries the informal sector, where most of the small enterprises exist, represents over 80% of employment (ILO 2012). These businesses often have a difficult time growing. There are a number of reasons that have been put forward by policy makers and researchers for this lack of growth, including missing the necessary skills to manage a growing business.International NGOs and governments are interested in training programs. The ILO and World Bank have invested heavily in trainings, calling greater access to skills training a game changer. However, the results of recent impact evaluations suggest there is reason to be skeptical of training programs. There is a growing evidence that these programs do not contribute to enterprise growth. Researchers now argue that such trainings, when delivered alone, are not effective. The debate over the right way to approach unemployment and business creation is just starting.

Corruption and mismanagement of public resources can affect the quality of government services and undermine growth. Can citizens in poor communities be empowered to demand better-quality public investments? We look at whether providing social accountability training and information on project performance can lead to improvements in local development projects. The program we study is unique in its size and integration in a national program. We find that offering communities a combination of training and information on project quality leads to significant improvements in household welfare. However, providing either social accountability training or project quality information by itself has no welfare effect. These results are concentrated in areas that are reported by local officials as more corrupt or mismanaged, suggesting local agents have significant information about where corruption and mismanagement is worse. We show evidence that the impacts come in part from community members increasing their monitoring of local projects, making more complaints to local and central officials and increasing cooperation. We also find modest improvements in people's trust in the central government. The results suggest that government-led, large-scale social accountability programs can strengthen communities' ability to address corruption and mismanagement as well as improve services.

Corruption and mismanagement of public resources can affect the quality of government services and undermine growth. Can citizens in poor communities be empowered to demand better-quality public investments? This paper looks at whether providing social accountability training and information on project performance can lead to improvements in local development projects. It finds that offering communities a combination of training and information on project quality leads to significant improvements in household welfare. However, providing either social accountability training or project quality information by itself has no welfare effect. These results are concentrated in areas that are reported by local officials as more corrupt or mismanaged. The impacts appear to come from community members increasing their monitoring of local projects, making more complaints to local and central officials, and cooperating more. The paper also finds modest improvements in people's trust in the central government. The study is unique in its size and integration in a national program. The results suggest that government-led, large-scale social accountability programs can strengthen communities' ability to improve service delivery.

Programs to actively support young people's employment prospects have existed for decades in industrialized countries; however, they are relatively new in developing nations. In a broad sense, youth livelihood interventions support young people's means to earn a living, and include training, public service, youth entrepreneurship, and financial services. More narrowly, many practitioners define youth livelihood programs as activities targeting particularly vulnerable and marginalized groups in the informal economy, with a specific focus on self-employment. This guide adopts the broader definition and includes workforce development for the formal sector. This is an introductory guide written for practitioners with no or very limited knowledge about impact evaluation or quantitative research methods, but who nonetheless care about demonstrating the true results of their work. It speaks to program managers and local monitoring and evaluation (M&E) officers across all types of organizations active in the youth livelihood field: local and international NGO's, local and national government officials, and bilateral and multilateral donors. Given the diversity of backgrounds and experiences among practitioners, it is impossible to tailor this guide to everyone equally well. However, we have tried to provide a comprehensive discussion of evaluation methods for youth livelihood interventions so that readers can identify the sections most relevant to their own interests and needs. With this guide, we aim to equip readers with the basic set of concepts and tools needed to make informed decisions about how to best evaluate their programs. We seek to provide a clear understanding of the variety of evaluation options available and the considerations that will allow practitioners to choose the most appropriate one based on learning objectives and operational context. Moreover, we describe how to manage an impact evaluation if it is the assessment method of choice. Our overarching goal is to strengthen the foundation of sound programming and policymaking by increasing the number of quality evaluations in the youth livelihood field, thereby facilitating the scale-up and replication of successful interventions.

During survey data collection, respondents' answers may be influenced by the behavior and characteristics of the enumerator, the so-called enumerator effect. Using a large-scale experiment in Uganda randomly pairing enumerators and respondents, the study explores for which types of questions the enumerator effect may exist. It is found that the enumerator effect is minimal in many questions, but is large for political preference questions, for which it can account for over 30 of the variation in responses. The study then explores which enumerator characteristics, and which of their combination with respondent characteristics, could account for this effect. Finally, the conclusion provides some practical suggestions on how to minimize enumerator effects, and potential bias, in various types of data collections.