Evaluation is an essential element of professional practice. However, there is little in the literature that is designed to help students involve and support young people in evaluating the impact of youth work activities. This comprehensive book explores current thinking about evaluation in the context of youth work and community work and offers both theoretical understanding and practical guidance for students, practitioners, organisational leaders and commissioners. Part 1 provides underpinning knowledge of the origins, purpose and functions of evaluation. It charts the developments in evaluation thinking over the past 50 years, and includes an exploration of ‘theory of change’. Concepts such as impact, impact measurement and shared measurement are critically examined to illustrate the political nature of evaluation. Findings from empirical research are used to illuminate the challenges of applying a quasi-experimental paradigm of evaluation of youth and community work. Part 2 introduces the reader to participatory evaluation and presents an overview of the histories, rationale and underpinning principles. Empowerment evaluation, collaborative evaluation and democratic evaluation are examined in detail, including practice examples. Transformative Evaluation, an approach specifically designed for youth and community work, is presented. Part 3 focuses on the ‘doing’ of participatory evaluation and offers guidance to those new to participatory evaluation in youth and community work and a helpful check for those already engaging. It provides valuable information on planning, methods, data and data analysis and processes for sharing knowledge. This essential text will enable the reader to reconstruct evaluation as a tool for learning as well as a tool for judging value. It provides a comprehensive reference, drawing on a wide range of literature and practice examples to support those involved in youth and community work to develop and implement participatory approaches to evaluating and communicating the meaning and value of youth and community work to a wider audience.

Youth Participatory Evaluation: Strategies for Engaging Young People is a groundbreaking book that provides step-by-step, playful, and accessible activities that have proven effective and can be used by evaluators, educators, youth workers, researchers, funders, and children’s and human rights advocates in their efforts to more effectively engage young people.

Showcases the value of professional work with young people as it is practiced in diverse forms, and in locations from around the world.

Can our research create conditions for people to flourish? What kinds of questions do we ask about the social world and how knowledge is produced? Does our approach to research itself matter? This edited collection explores and illustrates the nature of research for social justice. Drawing on a diverse range of social research projects, it examines research with and for young people, marginalised communities and those who work to further social justice and human rights goals. Providing key examples of the tools, processes and outcomes of research relevant to social justice, including where and how these frameworks can be used in the design and execution of research, this is a much-needed intervention to social research methodology.

Empiricism provides the backbone of knowledge creation within social science disciplines (e.g., psychology, sociology) and applied domains of study (e.g., education, administration) alike. Yet, relative to such domains of inquiry, comparatively little empirical research on evaluation has occurred, and the research knowledge base been infrequently synthesized and integrated to influence theory and practice. The proposed book aims to fill this void with regard to participatory evaluation, a set of collaborative approaches to evaluation that is receiving considerable attention of late, including a growing body of empirical studies. The authors begin in Part 1 with the delineation of a widely known and familiar conceptual framework for participatory evaluation. They then use the framework in Part 2 as a guide to conducting an extensive review of the extant empirical knowledge base in participatory evaluation, culminating in a thematic analysis of what we know about the approach. In Part 3 the authors focus on methodological considerations of doing research on participatory evaluation through a critique of existing studies and an explication of design choices drawn from their own research program. The book concludes in Part 4 with implications for moving the field forward in terms of important research questions, methodological direction and evaluation practice. This book will be of central interest to evaluation theorists and to those who choose to conduct research on evaluation; appeal will be conceptual and methodological. It will provide excellent supplementary reading for graduate students, many of whom seek to develop empirical studies on evaluation as part of their graduate programs. Rife with examples of participatory evaluation in practice, and practical implications, the book will also benefit evaluation practitioners with an interest in evaluation capacity building and participatory and collaborative approaches to practice.

Program evaluations are more relevant when conducted by the people directly involved in the programs and members of the communities they serve. Learn how empowerment and participatory evaluation can help community programs deliver more effective services! With this book, you’ll examine theoretical models, empirical investigations, and case studies that highlight important aspects of empowerment and participatory evaluation in community programs. The first half of the book presents frameworks and tools for empowerment and participatory evaluation, with an emphasis on transferring skills and building capacity. The remaining chapters examine specific efforts to implement empowerment and participatory evaluation with a range of stakeholders, highlighting the ways in which community members collaborated with evaluators and were actively engaged in the evaluation process. Covering various types of evaluations across a range of urgent social issues, this book offers practical steps for implementing evaluations and presents theoretical models as well as applied examples. The issues that Empowerment and Participatory Evaluation of Community Interventions addresses include: challenges faced by community-based organizations in conducting evaluations of their initiativesand solutions to those challenges, including the creation and implementation of an appropriate outcomes model ways to build capacity for participatory evaluation within community initiatives ways to promote the success and accountability of community programs how collaborative process evaluation can improve HIV prevention services evaluation techniques that illustrate the benefits of a collaborative approachwith a case study of the Conflict Resolution in Schools Programs a pilot study in which empowerment evaluation principles are used to evaluate the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago’s Youth Leadership Training Series (a program designed to train youth volunteers) Presenting important information on program evaluation, community-based interventions and community empowerment, empowerment/participatory evaluation, community psychology, collaborative partnerships, program improvement, utilization-focused evaluation, consultation, and more, Empowerment and Participatory Evaluation of Community Interventions is a resource that everyone involved in community psychology should have!

Empowered youth CAN and DO make a difference! Young people become empowered by their participation in the institutions and decisions that affect their lives—which in turn can lead to real positive change in the community. Youth Participation and Community Change presents leading authorities providing the latest research and effective approaches on how young people can be drawn to participate in organizations and communities. The diverse perspectives discuss youth participation in today’s society, the models and methods of its practice, the roles of youth and adults, and the future of youth participation and community in a diverse democracy. Approaches include those which promote participatory community-based research and evaluation, and involve youth groups in poor and racially segregated areas. The mainstream view of much of today’s youth is that of being victims of society rather than a being a possible positive influence on society as a whole. Youth Participation and Community Change seeks to shift the viewpoint from youth as being problems to empowering them to enact positive social change. The book explores community agency efforts to involve young people, and the process by which youth civic engagement promotes empowerment. Social work and public health approaches are examined, with cogent discussions on conceptual and theoretical issues. Empirically based case studies illustrate best practices and interdisciplinary work that draws upon psychology, sociology, social work, public health, education, and related academic disciplines and professional fields. Topics in Youth Participation and Community Change include: key dimensions of critical youth empowerment a case study of youth leadership development in Hawaii—the Sariling Gawa Youth Council the Lexington Youth Leadership Academy—a leadership development and community change program a new model for youth civic engagement in Hampton, Virginia three projects that engage urban youth in community change through participatory research youth engagement strategies and the benefits of youth participation in health research ten projects which used photovoice to represent, advocate, and enhance community health a participatory action research process with youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina the Growing Up in Cities project of UNESCO training students as facilitators for the Youth Empowerment Strategies (YES!) project four characteristics of engagement in the research literature and a school-community-university project differences in developmental outcomes among youth organizing, identity-support, and traditional youth development agencies Youth Participation and Community Change is thought-provoking, enlightening reading that is perfect for organizers, planners, policymakers, advocates, youth service workers, agency administrators, educators, students, and professionals in psychology, sociology, social work, urban planning, public policy, and public health.

Winner of the IARSLCE 2021 Publication of the Year Award and the Coalition for Community Writing Outstanding Book Award. Community members are rarely tapped for their insights on engaged teaching and research, but without these perspectives, it is difficult to create ethical and effective practices. Rewriting Partnerships calls for a radical reorientation to the knowledges of community partners. Emphasizing the voices of community members themselves—the adult literacy learners, secondary students, and youth activists who work with college students—the book introduces Critical Community-Based Epistemologies, a deeply practical approach to knowledge construction that centers the perspectives of marginalized participants. Drawing on interviews with over eighty community members, Rewriting Partnerships features community knowledges in three common types of community-engaged learning: youth working with college students in a writing exchange program, nonprofit staff who serve as clients for student projects, and community members who work with graduate students. Interviewees from each type of partnership offer practical strategies for creating more ethical collaborations, including how programs are built, how projects are introduced to partners, and how graduate students are educated. The book also explores three approaches to partnership design that create space for community voices at the structural level: advisory boards, participatory evaluation, and community grading. Immediately applicable to teachers, researchers, community partners, and administrators involved in community engagement, Rewriting Partnerships offers concrete strategies for creating more community-responsive partnerships at the classroom level as well as at the level of program and research design. But most provocatively, the book challenges common assumptions about who can create knowledge about community-based learning, demonstrating that community partners have the potential to contribute significantly to community engagement scholarship and program decision-making.

Youth participatory evaluation (YPE) combines action research and participatory evaluation's commitment to stakeholder empowerment with the new philosophy of positive youth development, which emphasizes young people as community assets and resources rather than as a source of social problems. This volume illustrates a broad range of approaches YPE advocates have used to enrich evaluation practice and strength programs for youth by involving young people as researchers and evaluators. Kim Sabo begins by arguing that youth-led evaluation by it's very nature promotes youth development, because these evaluations constitute Vygotskian zones of proximal development, situations where developmental learning through performance can take place. Les Voakes uses a case study of a conference organized by Town Youth Participation Strategies to illustrate how involving youth in the planning, operational decision-making, and evaluation of programs that directly affect them can benefit both the young participants and the programs themselves. Jonathan K. London, Kristen Zimmerman and Nancy Erbstein provide case studies of evaluation methods that link community and youth development practices. Genevieve Lau, Nancy H. Netherland and Mary Haywood show how YPE can be used as a training process for youth workers, one that enables them to better understand the needs and desires of youth and therefore design better programs for them. Roger A. Hart and Jasmine Rajbhandary examine Nepal's "children's clubs", and Save the Children's YPE-inspired evaluation of these clubs, to show how children can be encouraged to develop their own programs and largely evaluate them by themselves. Bonny L. Gildin describes the All Stars Talent Show Network, an innovative program that unites youth, program funders and adult volunteers in program development and evaluation. Finally, David Fetterman sums up and reflects on the lessons learned by the contributors to this volume. This is the 98th issue of the quarterly journal New Directions for Evaluation.