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As part of its mission to combat child labor, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking (OCFT) provides grants to support the work of organizations around the world that implement projects to keep children out of the child labor (referred to as OCFT grantees). Some OCFT grantees gather data to estimate, both before and after project implementation, the prevalence of child labor in the areas that they serve. They use the data to produce baseline and follow-up reports to document changes in child labor from before they started their activities to after they completed them.

In 2017, the researchers conducted a detailed review of the work of a purposively selected sample of nine OCFT grantees from nine countries where grants were awarded from 2012 to 2015. The objective of this review was two-fold: to identify areas of opportunity to support the continuous improvement of data collection and analysis and to develop resources that can help researchers to do so. These grantees are a small part of the broader research community working on child labor issues, yet they face many challenges that the larger research community shares. Based on the review of grantees’ work, and informed by other available best practices, this report presents a set of resources for conducting child labor research.

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Key Takeaways

• This review identified challenges throughout the research process, including during sampling, survey development, data collection, analysis and reporting, and releasing data for public use.
• The review can help researchers to overcome common challenges in developing sampling frames and conducting household-based prevalence surveys.

Citation

Liuzzi, S., Mitchell, S., Abarcar, P., Turiansky, A., Dolfin, S. (2018). Mathematica. Resources for Quantitative Surveys on Child Labor. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) sponsors independent evaluations and research, primarily conducted by external, third-party contractors in accordance with the Department of Labor Evaluation Policy and CEO’s research development process.