Over the past few years education vouchers and education cheques have been used in Germany in order to increase the participation in continuous professional development. There are similar, regionally structured programmes in Switzerland, Austria and in South-Tyrol. The study provides the results of a research project related to the effectiveness of professional development vouchers in those countries. The authors discuss their empirical results about the voucher programmes and analyse the effects in the national and international context. After an overview of current support programmes in Germany the study analyses financing structures, target groups (e.g. the low-skilled workers) and intensively demanded professional development topics. A particular focus thereby lies on the employees' subjective perspective in their selection of professional development as well as on new approaches to impact research in this context.weiterlesen