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Measuring the Quality and Impact of Open Access Youth Provision: Lessons and Recommendations from the Youth Investment Fund Learning Project

Measuring the Quality and Impact of Open Access Youth Provision: Lessons and Recommendations from the Youth Investment Fund Learning Project (PDF, 585KB)

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Introduction

This report aims to inform future measurement of the quality and impact of open access youth provision, using experience from the Youth Investment Fund (YIF). It reviews the YIF theory of change and the measures used in the evaluation. It also provides recommendations for improving how the quality and impact of open access youth provision are measured in future.

It’s for:

  • policymakers

  • funders

  • evaluation specialists

  • youth sector organisations

Findings

The report proposes a revised theory of change for open access youth provision and a set of revised or alternative measures to help understand and improve impact. These include:

  • a set of ‘user feedback’ questions to use with young people to share their experience and perceptions of open-access youth provision

  • a tool to measure the quality of youth provision: the Social and Emotional Learning Programme Quality Assessment (SEL-PQA)

The paper explains that the YIF evaluation highlighted challenges in collecting outcomes data from young people through surveys. It also offers recommendations on when and how to approach this in the future. This includes using observation rather than surveys.