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Abstract Across the globe, adolescent entrepreneurship education (EE) is promoted as a means of developing entrepreneurial competencies, skills, mindsets, and behaviors early in life. Yet after more than two decades of implementation, the field still lacks cumulative evidence about whether, how, and for whom EE works. This review argues that this problem reflects not only fragmented empirical findings but a deeper absence of theory-driven evaluation logic. To address this issue, we develop a Theory-Based Evaluation Framework that integrates program theory, evaluation theory, and social science theory into a layered structure clarifying how EE interventions are expected to work, under what conditions, and through which mechanisms. We applied this framework in an interpretative systematic review of 51 quantitative evaluation studies of adolescent EE published between 1997 and 2025 (PRISMA-guided searches). Each study was coded for theoretical grounding, causal logic, methodological rigor, and treatment of context and heterogeneity. Two core patterns emerge. First, theoretical integration is rare: few studies articulate a program theory, make use of evaluation theory, or connect causal assumptions to evaluation design, and most draw only superficially on relevant social science theory. Second, methodological rigor remains limited: most studies rely on cross-sectional or simple pre–post designs, lack credible counterfactuals, and under-report effect sizes, constraining causal inference and comparability. By diagnosing these structural weaknesses, the review shifts the question from “Does adolescent EE work?” to “What evaluative logic is required to know whether it works?” and offers a pathway toward more rigorous, mechanism-oriented and context-sensitive evidence.
Zarea et al. (Sat,) studied this question.