Youth & Media Evaluation
A valuable and compelling way of engaging in evaluation is to involve youth in the design, implementation, and assessment of programs. For our work with the Time Warner youth media grantees, we partnered with Drs. Barry Checkoway and Katie Richards-Schuster and their team from the University of Michigan's School of Social Work Program for Youth and Community, a leading advocate for Youth Participatory Evaluation. Their method involves engaging program participants, throughout a program, in reflection on intended outcomes and progress toward goals. They work to show young people that evaluation is an everyday activity with which they already have some familiarity, and it can be a form of community participation that gives youth influence and voice.
Creating a youth advisory board sparks youth involvement in the discussions around evaluation. BAVC's youth board members started engaging in evaluation activities by assessing curriculum and evaluation instruments and by conducting surveys with staff. Reel Grrls suggested choosing a small number of participants, even just one young person, as a representative to start thinking about youth-led evaluation activities. Youth Radio began youth participatory evaluation gradually by having a group of youth representatives attend staff meetings to voice their opinions, and by working closely with younger staff members on evaluation planning.
Youth are the hook for connecting with youth participants and program alumni for data collection and outreach. Reel Grrls and EVC both believe that youth are able to collect more useful and honest data from their peers because youth feel more comfortable talking frankly about their opinions to their peers rather than to adults. Reel Grrls' youth focus group took the lead on reviewing self-assessment instruments without adults and provided feedback on how the questions in the instruments are useful in capturing youth-centered learning experiences.
"Hearing from our young people about what kinds of questions to ask, how to ask them, and how to interpret them was invaluable to getting accurate and helpful results."
- BAVC YouthLink, Jessica Dorfman
Media is an essential vehicle for vivid documentation of evaluation data reported by youth. Reel Grrls recommends that youth evaluators use video to collect data and observe participants. Reel Grrls' youth participants came up with the idea of a "truth booth" where young people individually report to a video camera on the skills and knowledge they learned from the program and how the program could be improved. They believe that young people were more frank in front of a camera, and more reflective on their learning. Newz Crew young people also used video production to capture participant program experiences. In this process, Newz Crew was able to collect data on participants' overall experiences in their program.
Other ResourcesFacilitator's Guide for Participatory Evaluation with Young People
An easy-to-use workbook that teaches you the basic youth participatory process of evaluation and its practical application, with hands-on resources
www.ssw.umich.edu/youthAndCommunity/pubs/youthbook.pdf
Involving Young People in Community Evaluation Research
Barry Checkoway, David Dobbie, Katie Richards-Schuster, University of Michigan
Youth Engagement In Community Evaluation Research, Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 2003
www.cydjournal.org/2003Spring/checkoway.html
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