Evaluation can help bring youth voices to the table and help shape programs in ways that reflect what youth want to see. By listening to youth perspectives through evaluation, recommendations and decisions can be made based on youth’s perspectives and experiences, rather than just making assumptions about what youth want.

Evaluation is like a camping trip because you need to make a plan and pack the right gear depending on where you are going! Just like how you need to select your evaluation questions, data collection methods, etc. based on your program’s unique context. You also need to be able to adapt to unexpected circumstances along the way.

One way to support youth in making informed decisions for participating in evaluation is to ensure that consent materials (whether that is an oral consent script or written consent letter/form) are in plain language and easy for youth to understand. You could test to see if the materials are plain language by having youth review them and…

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Key Finding #4, “Youth voices are being crowded out of evaluation,” definitely resonates with me in my work context. In an evaluation I completed last year, we aimed to include both students and their parents/guardians in interviews, but in the end, we were only able to recruit parents/guardians. An evaluation recently completed by an…

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