Youth Employment in Urban Sierra Leone Survey Data

1 Elena Samonova Document Report: Labour Market Participation of Young People in Sierra Leone Bremen 2025 Introduction ‘Labour Market Participation of Young People’ research project is a mixed-methods study that aims to examine labour market experiences of young people in urban centres of Sierra Leone. The data gathered in this project present a diverse employment landscape and demonstrates attitudes of young people towards their work and the labour market in general. This project was generously founded by the Fritz-Thyssen Foundation. The mixed-methods study comprises 2 main elements of data collection: • Qualitative interviews and group discussions that aimed to explore youth daily lives, attitudes and values • Quantitative structured survey with 1500 respondents that aimed to explore patterns of youth employment, youth attitudes towards their labour market experiences and factors that might influence youth employment. This documentation report focuses only on the quantitative survey. This report is split into six sections: the first section describes the questionnaire design process and its translation into the Krio language. The second section presents the main characteristics of data. The next section describes the fieldwork process. It is followed by sections on data protection and data validation techniques. The final section sets the conditions of data use and required citations. Questionnaire design The questionnaire consists of 93 questions that are split into 8 sections. It contains questions on demographic information, employment data and working conditions, factors influencing employment, gender attitudes, role of education, youth voices and participation as well as two internationally recognized scales: Work Volition Scale (Duffy et al. 2012) and Decent Work Scale (Ferraro et al., 2018). The questionnaire was developed by the principal investigator Dr. Elena Samonova in close cooperation with Sierra Leonean co-researchers. Co-researchers conducted pre-test of the questionnaire with 14 young people to determine whether the questions are understandable and culturally appropriate. After the successful pre-testing a second draft of the questionnaire was prepared. This second draft was refined during the fieldwork training, and the final version of the questionnaire was ready in late March 2025. Though English is the official language in Sierra Leone, the majority of the population are more confident with other languages, especially the Krio language that is widely used as lingua franca in the country (Childs 2015). That is why it was necessary to make sure that the questionnaire is properly translated into language that young people understand. The questionnaire was formulated in English first and later translated into Krio by a research company Nestbuilders International that was responsible for the data collection. The translation was double checked by the local co-researchers and refined during the fieldwork training. Data Description The data comprises 1556 individual observations and 583 variables. The final sample size in the data set after cleaning is 1,502. 54 observations were disregarded during the cleaning process due to the being out of the age range. The survey took place in 3 cities: Freetown, Bo and Makeni. The following table shows the final sample: Freetown Bo Makeni 501 respondents 501 respondents 500 respondents Total: 1502 The target group are young people between 18and 35-years old who are engaged in an income generating activity and live in one of study sites (Freetown, Bo, Makeni). In total, 3 sampling strata have been constructed (one in each city). Samples were selected independently in each sampling stratum, by a two stages selection. In the first stage, enumeration areas (EA) were selected using the probability proportional to size (PPS) selection procedure (20 EAs in each city, 60 in total). As the EA size was taken the number of households residing in the EA based on the 2015 Census Population. During the next step 25 young people in each EA were randomly selected using the equal probability systematic selection technique. Fieldwork The questionnaire was administered by a Sierra Leonean company Nest Builders International. The fieldwork training was held on March 24th – 27th 2025. It was conducted by the principal investigator Dr Elena Samonova and NBI staff. During the training each question in the questionnaire was explained and discussed in detail, interviewers practiced in reading the questions both in English and Krio and played role games to prepare themselves for the fieldwork. Additionally, the Krio translation of the questionnaire was double-checked and amended where necessary. The questionnaire was administered in April 2025. The fieldwork was conducted by 3 data collection teams. Each of those teams consists of 5 experienced and well-trained interviewers. Additionally, 3 fieldwork supervisors were responsible for supervising the data collection teams and reviewing the questionnaires before delivering them to the NBI office. Data protection The interviewers explained the confidentiality of the information collected and that it would only be used for research purposes. All respondents signed contest forms electronically. The identities of the respondents will not be disclosed at any point. Data validation process Several phases of checking and validation are considered as follows: - At the field: Field supervisors were responsible for consistency and completeness of answers. -At the office: NBI managers rechecked consistency and completion of the surveyed questionnaires. Conditions of use Labour Market Participation survey is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA Citation requirements It is requested that the data is always cited along with the documentation report in the form as stated hereafter: Data: Samonova, Elena (2025). Labour Market Participation of Young People in Urban Sierra Leone. Bremen: University of Bremen. Documentation report: Samonova, Elena (2025). Labour Market Participation of Young People in Urban Sierra Leone. Documentation Report. Bremen: University of Bremen. References Childs, George Tucker. (2015) The language ecology of Sierra Leone. The Journal of Sierra Leone Studies 4, 2-10. Duffy, R. D., Diemer, M. A., Perry, J. C., Laurenzi, C., & Torrey, C. L. (2012). The construction and initial validation of the Work Volition Scale. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(2), 400411. Ferraro, T., Moreira, J. M., Dos Santos, N. R., Pais, L., & Sedmak, C. (2018). Decent work, work motivation and psychological capital: An empirical research. Work, 60(2), 339-354.