YP2LE PYD Measurement Toolkit Roundtable Proceedings Report

Overview of the PYD Measurement Toolkit

In 2016, under the YouthPower Learning project, the Positive Youth Development Measurement Toolkit was developed.

As defined under YouthPower Learning, “Positive Youth Development (PYD) is both a philosophy as well as a programmatic approach for supporting healthy, productive, and engaged youth as they grow into adulthood. The PYD approach rests on the idea that youth with more developmental assets are more likely to enjoy academic success, have greater economic prospects, be more civically engaged, and be more healthy in the long term” (p.1). PYD “engages youth along with their families, communities, and/or governments so that youth are empowered to reach their full potential. PYD approaches build skills, assets, and competencies; foster healthy relationships; strengthen the environment; and transform systems” (p. 15).

 

Roundtable Themes and Key Takeaways

• Emphasize youth engagement in design, data collection, and analysis processes.
• Consider youth-friendly research approaches and opportunities for training and capacity building of youth researchers to effectively engage in research.
• Adapt the PYD framework to the local context and sector of focus and look to other non-youth activities to apply relevant learnings and approaches that could inform PYD measurement.
• Acknowledge the value of host-country expertise to support contextualization provide a how-to on variance testing to support valid constructs/indicators, which need to be framed in theory.
• Build in time/funding for practitioners and researchers to carry out measurement activities well via monitoring and evaluation.
• Prioritize democratization of research and capacity building of youth and balance with conducting high-quality research.
• Enable local organizations to use their own data for decision making and ensure data are being valued/used.
• Prioritize intentionality of inclusion and protection.
• Apply creative ways of obtaining valid consent.
• Address tension between caregiver and child consent in different situations and protect researchers simultaneously.
• Consider Global North and Global South IRBs more equally.