Evaluation Practice for Projects with Young People: A Guide to Creative Research

 This straightforward and original text sets out best practice for designing, conducting and analysing research on work with young people. A creative and practical guide to evaluation, it provides the tools needed to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and applied practice.

Written by an experienced, erudite team of authors this book provides clear, pragmatic advice that can be taken into the classroom and the field.

The book:

• Provides strategies for involving young people in research and evaluation
• Showcases creative and participatory methods
• Weaves a real world project through each chapter, highlighting challenges and opportunities at each stage of an evaluation; readers are thus able to compare approaches
• Is accompanied by a website with downloadable worksheets, templates and videos from the authors

This is the ideal text for postgraduate students and practitioners who work with young people in the statutory and voluntary sectors.

I have worked in education, social care, outdoor education and youth work as a front line worker, manager and at times, leader. I have encountered the challenge of measurement of progress in all of these settings. The emphasis on impact evidence varied across contexts, but one constant was the need to develop a form of evaluation that; benefitted the young people I worked with, allowed me to stay true to my values as a practitioner, and met the needs of the organisation that I was employed by. I taught  research methods on a Masters programme in Leading Integrated Children’s Services at the University of Cumbria, I was the Head of Research at Brathay Trust, a youth work organisation, and am now a director at Indigo Children’s Services supporting children’s centres, schools and children’s services to provide outstanding services for children and families. Evidencing the efficacy of services and impact for young people remains a constant challenge in all of these roles and is the impetus for this book.

I’ve worked both nationally and internationally as a practitioner, educator, evaluator and researcher in the area of youth development. My interests in the area are rooted firmly in practice, the foundations of which were laid whilst working in the USA as an experiential educator. My interest in understanding practice more and more led me to study at undergraduate, masters and doctoral levels. In 2011 I completed my PhD in empowerment and critical pedagogy, working with young people and practitioners to understand the process of empowerment in youth development. Now, as the Head of Research at Brathay Trust, I work alongside practitioners and students to understand, evaluate and develop our practice.