Pooled Longitudinal Dataset on the Assessment of an Apprenticeship-Based Entrepreneurship Intervention in Nigeria

This dataset presents longitudinal data collected through four surveys (in six-monthly intervals) of fresh university and polytechnic graduates in Nigeria. The data were collected from 21,940 unique young men and women who underwent National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme across ten states in Nigeria. The NYSC programme is a compulsory one-year national service that all Nigerians under the age of 30 years must undergo after graduation. A key component of the one-year service is the Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) programme of the NYSC. The dataset is useful for many purposes. It contains enough information to fully profile the entrepreneurship and apprenticeship characteristics of the fresh graduates. Moreover, it can be used to quantify the potential pool of future entrepreneurs among highly educated Nigerian youth. The dataset was originally used to assess the impact of NYSC, being an apprenticeship-based entrepreneurship intervention, on entrepreneurial outcomes among young persons. However, its use may also extend to an assessment of the impact of compulsory entrepreneurship training in the Nigerian university system that produced most of the respondents.