6.1 Evaluations, monitoring, auditing and assessment

6.1

Evaluations, monitoring, auditing and assessment

This chapter outlines the ways evaluative tools, such as project or service evaluations, auditing, monitoring and needs assessment can be used to enable youth participation. These are similar tools, which are all based on the process of systematically exploring and analysing something, such as a youth project, a youth information service or the views of young people on youth information. This is done to better understand the qualities and nature of things being explored. It allows youth information services to identify improvements to their work based upon the findings. Evaluative tools all involve collecting data then making judgements about what can be learnt from this data.

Project or service evaluations, auditing and monitoring can be used to listen to the views of young people about existing work of youth information services. They involve exploring how effective youth information services or projects are and what young people think of them.

→ Project and service evaluations - identify the effectiveness and functioning of a specific project or service, to examine that project or service in detail.

→ Quality auditing - compare a project or service to a benchmark or set of quality standards, to identify if the project meets these standards.

→ Monitoring - routine gathers data about the day-to-day running of services on an ongoing basis, to support the management of these services.

Needs assessments form part of planning youth information services. Rather than analysing an existing initiative, needs assessments focus on exploring what sort of youth information young people need in general. When young people’s views are sought during assessments they can be used as a way of listening to young people’s views on their own needs.

Young people can also participate in running and developing any of the tools above by being involved in their design and helping carry them out.