The FUS was conducted on all youth from treatment and control groups who could be successfully re‐ contacted, resulting in sample sizes as presented in Table 3. Only about 45% of treatments and controls were successfully re‐contacted, due to the high rates of mobility among the youth, and a very challenging security environment in which this survey work has taken place. To assess the extent of attrition bias, we regressed our main outcome of interest variables at baseline on an indicator for attrition. This analysis, which is further elaborated below, reveals no significant overall difference in baseline outcomes between attrition and non‐attrition individuals. The section bellows describes in detail how various samples used for evaluation were created, and how these samples compare to each other in terms of the basic characteristics at the baseline.

**Table 3: Sample sizes for various groups used in evaluation**

||Eligible|Treatments|Re‐interviewed<br>Treatments|Controls|Re‐interviewed<br>controls|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Intake 4|1,199|381|168|270|110|
|Intake 5|1,014|362|170|299|140|
|Total|2,213|743|338|569|250|

Source: Authors’ calculations based on survey data.

# _4.3 Sample Balance_

## 4.3.1 Sample Balance (participants vs. eligible non‐participants)

The youths who were selected into the program were randomly drawn, with stratification by gender, from a larger sample of eligible applicants. As noted in Table 3, 743 individuals were accepted into the program (381 in intake 4 and 362 in intake 5) out of a total of 2,213. Since the baseline screening survey was administered to all applicants, a logical first step is to verify that the baseline characteristics of program participants look similar to all eligible applicants, as would be expected if selection were indeed random.

We compare the means of several basic baseline characteristics between participating youth and other eligible youth who did not participate, and test whether the difference in means is statistically significant. These results are reported in Table 4 (A). Column 1 shows the means and standard deviations for eligible non‐treatments (or “other eligible”), while Column 2 shows the corresponding means and standard deviations for treatment youth. Column 3 indicates the difference in means (and standard errors underneath), and if the difference is statistically significant at conventional levels. The results indicate that, as expected, the two groups are very similar to each other. The only characteristic that is somewhat different (at a 5% level) is never having a formal (wage) job before, with respectively 79% of treatments and 75% of eligible non‐treatments being in this category. In terms of the levels of basic characteristics, treatments are on average 24.7 years old, 63% are males, 37% are married, and the average educational attainment is 9.3 years (see Column 2, Table 4A). 36% of them report having some earnings from an informal job/self‐employment last month, and 32% report looking for a job during the same reference period. Overall, the similarity of the two groups is consistent with the random selection of participants from the pool of eligible candidates.

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