News
‘Asking Good Questions: The Survey’ is officially live!
At the Centre, we are regularly asked what the youth sector is thinking and ‘doing’ about evaluation. Sometimes this is about trends – “do most youth organisations have a Theory of Change now?’ – and sometimes it is about perceptions – “what do youth workers think about gathering data from young people?”. Sometimes we have questions that we’d love to hear practitioners’ voices on, like “how do you use your smart phones in your work with young people?”. We talk to lots of practitioners every week, but often struggle to represent the breadth of views and experiences. We wanted to find a way to enable those working with and for young people to share their thoughts on evaluation quickly and easily – with us and with each other - so we can collectively understand how it’s experienced now, and how it could be better.
‘Asking Good Questions: The Survey’ is a regular anonymous survey created by and for organisations working with young people. We’d love for you to take part: you can access this month’s survey here. The survey will be open for 3 weeks and will close on 27 February.
We’ll ask three short questions in each survey, with a particular focus on evaluation, quality, impact and learning. Once you’ve responded, you’ll be able to see the data live as your colleagues across the sector take part, and we’ll then share the final findings when each survey closes. We’ll be drawing insights from the survey data to inform our work, and share with funders and government. The survey will enable us to represent your voices directly.
We’re interested to hear from anyone who works or volunteers for an organisation working directly with young people in the UK. You’ll need to input your email address to access the survey link, and you’ll be asked a few short registration questions before you take part (you’ll only need to do this once). The results of the survey are completely anonymous and we’ll never share your personal data.
At the Centre, we’ve been thinking a lot about how we listen to youth organisations, and have been influenced and excited by the growth in Teacher Tapp in the formal education sector. We think our survey is the first of its kind within the youth sector (but let us know if it isn’t!). We hope it is an exciting opportunity to learn more about how the different organisations that make up the youth sector work, and for an honest reflection of what they really think and experience when it comes to impact measurement and evaluation.
We’re keen for this to be a collaborative project, so if you have ideas for questions you’d like to ask your colleagues across the sector, or you think other stakeholders need to hear practitioner views on, fill out this google form or get in touch with hello@youthimpact.uk.
Involving young people in heritage: learning from Kick the Dust
In 2015, the National Lottery Heritage Fund recognised that young people were underrepresented as audiences, participants and volunteers in the heritage sector. In response they developed ‘Kick the Dust’, an investment of £10 million in 12 projects selected by young people that bring together heritage and youth organisations.
The Centre is working alongside Renaisi as learning partners on Kick the Dust and you can read about what has been learned so far in the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s latest blogs on involving young people in heritage and what we learned in year two. Also look out for #kickthedust on social media.
Practice Development Day: Reminder
Our next Practice Development Day will be taking place at our offices in Hackney, East London, on Monday 2 March.
Our first Practice Development Day sold out and we are nearly sold out again - so don’t miss out on your chance of a space! Tickets cost £50, or £35 concession for organisations with a turnover of less than £100k. You can buy your ticket here.
The Practice Development Day is an intensive one-day introduction to the Centre’s approach to evaluation. It’s best suited to those working in organisations or agencies that work directly with young people, and who are looking to embed evaluation into their practice for continuous learning and improvement.
The Adult Rating of Youth Behaviour (ARYB): Pilot
We are launching the next phase of our pilot programme for an observational approach to collecting evidence of positive outcomes for young people. The Adult Rating of Youth Behaviour (ARYB) is the first tool of its kind to be trialled in the UK.
We are looking for organisations that are working very intentionally to support young people’s social and emotional learning (this doesn’t necessarily mean pre-defined outcomes, but that interactions with and experiences for young people are deliberately created to develop social and emotional skills), with the capacity to try out the tool over the course of 12 months, from April 2020. Find out more here.
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Our Thoughts
In this section of the newsletter, our team members set out what’s currently occupying their thoughts. This month, Jo Hickman Dunne, Research Assistant at the Centre, reflects on how we challenge the status quo.
As we roll into February and I’ve ticked off two months in my new role here at the Centre,
there a few things I want to share.
Perhaps the big conclusion I have come to is that thinking differently is hard. Bethia McNeil, the Centre’s CEO recently discussed our mission as an organisation – to challenge the status quo, and push forward new ways of behaving in relation to evaluation and impact measurement. But how do you change direction, how do you swim upstream, when others are swimming with the flow? For some of you revolutionary thinkers out there, this may not seem like such a big deal. But for those of you, like me, who don’t really consider themselves revolutionary in any sense, here is what I have learnt.
1. Ask questions. It’s no coincidence that our latest practice development framework is called ‘Asking Good Questions’. But I’m thinking more broadly than the six questions laid out in this framework. As individuals, we need to start off by asking all kinds of questions, where we think it is important. We need to not be afraid to ask ‘stupid’ questions, and as organisations we need to make sure the benchmark for what counts as interesting and relevant is not set too high. Sometimes the most simple and significant musings get left out because they aren’t thought to be worthy.
2. Be curious. Of course, this relates to asking questions, but there is more to it than that. Being curious is about having an open mind to allow new possibilities to reveal themselves to you. There is a real danger that we can all get stuck in our to-do lists and day-to-day schedules, without giving ourselves time and space to look outside of them. As an organisation that wants to drive change, we know we need to create space for curiosity to flourish. It is never about having all answers, or even knowing that the questions we are trying to answer are always the right ones. We need to be committed towards inquiry, as opposed to absolute knowledge and technical know-how.
3. Sharing ideas. This is one we’ve been thinking on lately. Strangely enough it’s not so easy to swim upstream without a little help. Sure, we talk all the time – but how much of what we are thinking gets actioned, and how much goes unsaid, despite all the words? How can we know what we want to say to the outside world, if we are unsure what is going on for each other? The importance of creating effective sharing mechanisms and a safe environment for doing so cannot be underestimated. We are all busy, and trying to find time to have a supportive conversation about that half formed question that popped into your head in the middle of the night is not always straight forward! Getting it wrong is ok, but we will never know if we are on the right track if we don’t use our colleagues as a sounding board. As an organisation, we are challenging ourselves to do more of the above. We have acknowledged where we are not very good in some areas and we are trying to up our game. As an individual, I’m daring myself to ask stupid questions and share what I mostly deem to be useless ‘brainfarts’. It’s uncomfortable, but it should be – changing the status quo isn’t supposed to be easy.
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What We're Reading
Ed Anderton, our Director of Practice Development, has written this blog where he introduces the first draft of the Centre’s refreshed Theory of Change and explores how we arrived there. We’re excited to be sharing our outline Theory of Change publicly for the first time. As all Theories of Change should be, this is a work in progress, which we are sharing now in the knowledge that it will be refined and refreshed on a regular basis, through reflection with all our partners. As ever, we would welcome your comments, questions, challenges and suggestions.
This article from the Centre for Evaluation Innovation is focuses on ‘developmental evaluation’, an approach that assists the development of social change initiatives in complex environments, rather than evaluation that ‘looks back’ from the end of an initiative. The article explores how developmental evaluation is fundamentally different to traditional evaluation routes, and it provides tips for evaluators and evaluation commissioners who are interested in using the approach. If you are new to the concept of developmental evaluation, you may first be interested to read this really clear introduction to the concept from Better Evaluation.
We’ve been interested to read two posts from the American Evaluation Association 365 Blog this month. Firstly, Jacqueline Craven provides some helpful resources for thinking about and distinguishing between measurement scales. Jacqueline emphasises that measurement scales are an essential component of a sound evaluation, but are often overlooked. Secondly, Prentice Zinn discusses the tensions that can arise between non-profit organisations and funders when working with evaluations and data, suggesting that most of the tensions stem from a failure to have honest conversations on the topic. Prentice highlights some common reasons that cause funders to resist having these conversations, which is a useful starting point for thinking about how we can overcome these barriers.
At the Centre we are always on the look out for newsletters to subscribe to, and we especially enjoyed the January edition of this newsletter from Feedback Labs. Reflecting on their work in 2019, Feedback Labs explore how the ‘feedback movement’ is gaining traction across philanthropic, non-profit and government sectors around the world, and they share a range of their favourite feedback-themed resources from the past year.
This long read from the UK Government Policy Lab considers the question: how might policymakers better understand citizens’ perspectives when designing policy? Following a four-year project that explored the use of ethnography as a tool for policy making, the blog looks at how ethnography can be used to incorporate citizens’ lived experiences in the policy making process, as well as how this can be combined with other types of data.
Finally, this blog from Sonya Heisters, Director of YouthTruth, insists that we should improve our ability and willingness to ask for – and listen to – feedback from young people about their educational experiences. Sonya argues that “the most elegant and actionable way to know if the system we’re designing is working as intended is to solicit honest feedback that considers each and every student voice”. We think Sonya is spot on!
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Network News and Events
We have the following upcoming network meetings:
London Regional Impact Network
Monday 2 March 2:00-4:30pm, London Youth, 47-49 Pitfield Street N1 6DA.
Contact Hazel Robertson to attend.
South West Regional Impact Network
Friday 6 March 10:30am – 3:30pm, Tiverton, Devon.
Contact Gill Millar to attend.
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