Baseline Survey and Panel Design
The baseline sample draws from terminal-year students in 20 secondary schools in Yaounde, stratified across school quality and public or private status to support robust longitudinal analysis.
The design is intended to produce a cohort of roughly 5,000 students and to show how youth pathways diverge once school ends and first encounters with work and adulthood begin.
The baseline design is the bridge between the research agenda and the field operation. By drawing from 20 secondary schools across public-private and school-quality lines, it gives the later panel a structured starting point rather than a convenience sample.
That starting point is what lets the wider project relate school completion, first work encounters, and early adult responsibilities back to documented differences at the end of secondary school.