The JA Institute builds monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL) capacity worldwide to iteratively improve our learning experiences and partner engagement. More importantly, The JA Institute invests much of our research effort in scaling innovation by disseminating state-of-art social-science research and offering academic fellowships, through which researchers obtain access to our distributional network to conduct studies.

Research that matters.

  • How do we equip young people with the skillset and mindset to build thriving communities?

  • How do we prepare young people to succeed in a global economy?

  • How do we ensure young people achieve economic mobility?

  • How do we re-engineer an education model that is relevant to our evolving world?

Ongoing Projects

AI Competency and Youth Voices on AI

Adopting the UNESCO’s AI Competency Framework for Students, The JA Institute is running a ten-country AI competency research. This research develops an AI competency assessment framework and it is part of the effort to democratize AI skills and knowledge through the United Nations International Telecommunication Union’s AI Skills Coalition.

JA Global Impact and Insights Report 2025

Consolidates 80+ research and insights from our network of 340+ JA offices in 118 countries into our biennial publication––the JA Global Impact and Insights Report. The themes include: Youth Entrepreneurship, Employability and Tech Readiness, Economic Empowerment, and Educating for Future Skills.

Other projects in the pipeline . . .

Upcoming projects include:

  • Research on durable skills for entrepreneurship and workforce development

  • Our new Impact Intelligence framework, leveraging state-of-art social science-research and machine-learning methodologies.

JA’s Research History

As a century-old organization, JA has invested in impact research to understand our role in preparing young people for entrepreneurship and employment. Since our founding, millions of JA alumni have built new ventures from the ground up, won election to the highest political offices, studied at leading universities, and invented products that have revolutionized industries. Millions more have built ethical and sustainable small businesses that help the world meet the challenges of the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development. And millions of other JA alumni have achieved less well-known—but no less laudable—successes, like being the first in their families to graduate from college, spending less than they earn in order to save for retirement, and becoming respected and effective leaders. 

As a result of their JA experiences, our alumni start more companies, hire more employees, and produce significantly larger annual sales than ventures led by non-alumni. Our alumni also save more, hold less debt, and are less likely to spend more than they earn. JA alumni report higher levels of household income and career satisfaction. And they’re less likely to drop out of school, face unemployment, or collect social insurance. Here are some of the third-party research that predates The JA Institute and highlights the impact of entrepreneurship and work readiness education: