Date: Saturday, March 29, 2025
Youth Focused Evaluation Topical Interest Group is for Evaluation About Youth, for Youth, and with Youth. The Youth Focused Evaluation TIG aims to collaboratively create learning spaces for all evaluators and researchers (adult and youth) that focus on the practices and outcomes of positive youth development and participatory approaches across informal and formal contexts. The YFE-TIG speaks to youth and adult evaluators’ and researchers’ unique needs by promoting the development and use of responsive tools and methods leading to practical and transformative outcomes for young people. The YFE-TIG helps youth and adult evaluators and researchers develop effective practices in professional development, program quality, measurement, ethics, youth participation, and amplifying youth voice and power. Ultimately, we want to support more profound youth-informed or youth-led evaluation and decision-making. This week’s posts are sponsored by the YFE-TIG.
Hello! We’re Jenna Sethi, Founder, and Clare Eisenberg, Senior Consultant, with Informed Change, a research and evaluation firm that helps youth-serving organizations use data for innovation and storytelling.
Over the past two years, we’ve developed a Youth-Centered Evaluation Process (YCEP) that blends principles from Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and Youth Participatory Evaluation (YPE) with our youth engagement approach (described below). While rooted in YPAR and YPE, our process allows more flexibility because we have found that many organizations experience barriers (e.g., funder requirements, time constraints, youth interests/goals) to conducting YPAR/YPE with fidelity. Our engagement approach supports equitable youth-adult partnership throughout the process.
A values-based set of principles guides our evaluation work with young people:
Relationship-Based: Meaningful relationships are the heart of successful projects. They allow young people to feel safe taking risks with their learning. We start projects involving youth with fun activities and rapport-building discussions that create trust among youth and adults.
Equity-Focused: Adults don’t often include youth in decision-making. Partnering with young people through every stage of the evaluation process teaches valuable research skills and empowers youth as change-makers.
Co-Creative: A collaborative and creative tone allows youth and adults to bring insights from their unique experiences to the evaluation process.
Scaffolded: We don’t expect young people to learn everything they need to know to conduct a successful evaluation right away. We scaffold learning by building a foundation of evaluation knowledge and practicing new skills together.
Responsive: As we get to know young people and their talents, skills, and needs, we respond by modifying the process to support their specific interests and growth.
Youth-Centered: We constantly check in with ourselves to ensure we’re centering youth voices and experiences. Even in a structured process, the tendency for adults (even us!) to take over can easily creep into a project. Unexpected obstacles or changes, such as funders’ timelines or data collection obstacles, can create pressure that makes adults want to take over. It’s important to hold space for a youth-centered process amidst these challenges.
Participatory Evaluation in Youth and Community Work: Theory and Practice by Susan Cooper – helpful theory and principles for collaborating with youth on evaluation
Exploring Barriers and Solutions to Youth STEM Participation – example of a Youth-Centered Evaluation Process we conducted with a youth evaluation team
Bringing young people into the evaluation process takes time and effort, but our experiences working with youth evaluators have also taught us that the final results and recommendations are ALWAYS better and more authentic when young people’s voices are centered throughout the process.
The American Evaluation Association is hosting YFE TIG Week with our colleagues in the Youth Focused Evaluation Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our YFE TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.