Youth Engagement Measurement
Meaningful youth engagement is a key component of positive youth development (PYD) programs and it is important to consider how to measure the level and value of their participation. This measurement not only helps track the results of such engagement on youth and other program outcomes, but also helps ensure that the opportunities provided for participation are constructive and substantial. To some extent, youth engagement measurement is in a nascent stage. While many youth-related indicators exist, there are few relevant to youth engagement that utilize a positive youth development approach. The purpose of this online guide is to help program implementers, researchers, evaluators, and funders to identify indicators that can be used to effectively measure youth engagement and provide additional resources. The youth engagement indicators can be used during program design, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) to ensure youth participation in program activities and during M&E implementation to monitor and evaluate progress towards achieving specific outputs and outcomes.
Measuring youth engagement is useful in many ways. First, indicators can be used to assess changes in youth engagement over time throughout a program. Youth engagement indicators can also be linked to youth engagement indicators to sectoral outcomes of interest, or to key commitments like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The indicators listed in this guide are not the only indicators available, but it can provide a foundation on how to measure youth engagement consistent with a PYD approach.
Youth Engagement Indicators
Building on the Youth Engagement Community of Practice (YE CoP) technical brief, which provides measurement statements and guidance for monitoring and evaluation youth programs, this online tool provides illustrative indicators that may be useful for monitoring and evaluation purposes. The measurement statements found in the brief are classified at three levels: youth, program or organization, and enabling environment. For each category listed, we provide the definition followed by a table that maps out the measurement statement to an illustrative indicator example and the measurement source. The measurement statements come from the YouthPower Learning Youth Engagement Community of Practice technical brief and the second column provides examples of illustrative indicators that can assess the measurement statements shared in the brief. Click each level to read more.
Youth-level indicators “set a standard or aspiration for youth engagement from the perspective of youth, and focus on topics such as type of engagement, level of engagement, and satisfaction with engagement” (YouthPower Learning Youth Engagement Community of Practice, 2018). These indicators measure youth engagement form youth’s perspective only, and as such most of the data collection for these indicators would be with youth.
Program or organizational indicators “look at how programs or organizations are engaging youth, what resources they are dedicating to youth engagement, and what outcomes are resulting from these efforts” (YouthPower Learning Youth Engagement Community of Practice, 2018). These indicators are at the program level and would be collected from program staff or records.
Enabling environment indicators “focus on viewing youth engagement from the parental, community, and government perspective; this includes such things as support and commitment of youth engagement, policies in place, and related outcomes” (YouthPower Learning Youth Engagement Community of Practice, 2018). These indicators come from the actors that surround youth, from their parents, their peers, their community, up through national/policy structures.
There are many ways to convert the measurement statements into an indicator, all depending on how key terms in the statement are defined, and how the target population is defined for that indicator. It is important for those that use these measurement statements to discuss with the team what operational definition of that statement is most important to the research question or M&E plans, and then define the indicator accordingly. It is also important that indicators are disaggregated by age and sex.
Most of the indicators are process indicators (i.e. indicators that refer to the activities carried out to achieve the objectives of the program and include both what is done and how well it is done) but there are some indicators that use validated tools that can measure impact (i.e. results of the efforts). In some cases, there are selected tools which serve as the measurement source (i.e. Child Trends Goal Orientation Scale and The Communities that Care Youth Survey) which are designed to track change in PYD outcomes and generally should be measured pre-intervention, immediately post-intervention and at future follow-ups (e.g. 3 months, 6 months, 1 and 2 years, or longer) depending on the funds and project life span. The Child Trends Goal Orientation Scale and the Communities that Care Youth Survey were recommended because they are reliable and valid tools that align with the measurement statements and could be adapted to be contextually relevant.