What about a New Tool to Evaluate Youth Work?
2020
What about a New Tool to Evaluate Youth Work?
The Finnish Youth Research Society is conducting a new project in aim of developing a new multifaceted youth work evaluation tool. The documentation tool, called Logbook, is used in evaluation data-gathering in cooperation with the Centre of expertise for municipal youth work in Kanuuna, Finland. This has been conducted since 2018, with the piloting organisations being municipalities, non-governmental youth organisations and parishes. The data-gathering project is set to last 2 years. These organisations are testing the tool by applying it to evaluate the services they offer. The project also co-operates with the development project for evaluation in youth work coordinated in the city of Lappeenranta in South-Karelia, it is funded by the Regional State Administrative Agency for Southern Finland. The role of the Finnish Youth Research Network is to work as a research co-partner.
How was the evaluation tool developed?
This evaluation tool was developed for the needs of young people in deep focus of the following concepts; the quality of the process, and the impact of the service or a need for more resources. This is important due to the lack of knowledge on how many young people were left out of the service because of the services’ current limitations.
Key strengths of an evaluation tool:
The evaluation data is gathered from different stakeholders: young people, bodies offering youth work and decision-makers.
The data is gathered with a broad variety of tools such as interactive evaluation, survey, peer and self-evaluation.
The aim is to cover different kinds of aspects of youth work.
Source: https://www.youthresearch.fi/research-projects/youth-work-evaluation-tool
