Youth Participatory Methods for Evaluating Youth Civic Engagement: Findings from a Multi-Year Evaluation Program
Participatory evaluation with young people is the process of engaging young people in developing knowledge about the issues and institutions that impact their lives. It involves young people in asking their own questions developing their own methods, gathering their own data, analyzing their findings, and using their information for change (Checkoway et al, 2003). Youth civic engagement efforts, the process through which young people become actively engaged in the public institutions that impact their lives (e.g. Checkoway, 2013, McBride et al, 2006), are perfectly positioned for engagement in youth participatory evaluation methodology. However, to date there are few documented examples within social work literature of youth participatory efforts to assess their methodologies and potential for new models of evaluation.
Methods
This paper presents a case-based study of the youth participatory evaluation of a youth dialogues and public policy program in a major metropolitan area that has engaged over 300 young people since 2005 in youth civic engagement development. A component of the multi-level evaluation has included a youth participatory approach to capture and assess youth civic engagement outcomes at the individual and community level and efforts to evaluate youth engagement in community change efforts.
This paper examines the approach, process and findings from the last seven years (2006-2013) of the youth participatory evaluation. For the evaluation, each team of young people participated in designing, developing, and implementing evaluation methods to capture and assess youth civic engagement outcomes at the individual and community level. In this case study, we document the various types of methods developed, analyze the purposes and processes used, the approaches taken, and discuss the information and impact of the methods for understanding youth civic engagement.
Findings
Case analysis findings indicate that young people have used a variety of creative and innovative methods to assess youth participation. Examples of methods include a range of creative, arts-based and technology-based methods including: drawings, videos, photographs, on-line surveys, theatre/socio-drama, cartoons, and on-line word clouds. Methods were often chosen for their ability to capture the information and resonate with the youth participants. Methods also reflect the ability to present information in ways that link to action. The paper also discuss the role of young people in evaluating their own efforts, an analysis of the lessons learned across the strategies, and the implications for evaluation of community and civic change initiatives.
Implications
Youth participatory approaches provide new insight into methods and strategies for capturing youth civic engagement. They reflect creative and innovative models that are often not included in current efforts to document and measure youth civic engagement within social work. Although our case can not be generalized, we believe that youth participatory methods hold interesting promise for social work practice and research and more studies are needed to explore the range of youth-developed and informed -methodology and their potential and limitations as measures for assessing youth civic engagement.