Abstract
Active engagement of youth participants in the evaluation process is an increasingly sought out method, but the field can still benefit from new methods that ease youth participatory evaluation implementation. Meaningful youth engagement in the evaluation process is particularly advantageous under the 4-H thriving model because of its potential to contribute to positive youth development, foster relationship building, enhance evaluation capacity, and improve program quality through improved evaluations. This program sought to facilitate actively engaging youth in the evaluation process by breaking it up into clear and manageable steps including evaluation design, data collection, data interpretation and analysis, reporting results, and outlining programmatic change. To achieve this aim, program staff designed the Evaluation Skill-a-Thon, a set of self-paced, experiential evaluation activities at various stations through which youth participants rotate. Actively involving youth participants in the evaluation process using the Skill-a-Thon model resulted in youth being able to identify and design programmatic changes, increased participation and response rates in other evaluations, and several youth participants’ gaining an interest in evaluation and working to design evaluations in later years. The Evaluation Skill-a-Thon holds promise for actively engaging youth participants in the entire evaluation process, easy implementation, and increasing evaluation capacity.
Highlights
In the past decade, the field of program evaluation has evolved considerably with increasing attention turned towards improving program quality and involving stakeholders through participatory evaluation (Arnold & Cater, 2011)
This paper aims to contribute to youth participatory evaluation (YPE) literature by introducing the Evaluation Skill-a-Thon as one such new methodology which incorporates a participatory design, connects to the 4-H thriving model, and scaffolds the evaluation process into manageable steps which can promote youth and organizational evaluation capacity building
The Evaluation Skill-a-Thon was carried out with and by youth participating in the Pima County 4-H Healthy Living Ambassadors program, a 4-H club at Tucson Village Farm that provides middle and high school-aged youth from around the county with the opportunity to learn about the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and how to promote healthier habits within their own communities
Summary
The field of program evaluation has evolved considerably with increasing attention turned towards improving program quality and involving stakeholders through participatory evaluation (Arnold & Cater, 2011). The developing approach of youth participatory evaluation (YPE) is pertinent to youth-centered 4-H programs because of its potential to (a) contribute to positive youth development (Checkoway & Richards-Schuster, 2003; White et al, 2012;), (b) build organizational evaluation capacity (Arnold & Cater, 2011), and (c) improve program quality (Brown, 2006; Lewis et al, 2019; O’Connor & Zeldin, 2005). This paper aims to contribute to YPE literature by introducing the Evaluation Skill-a-Thon as one such new methodology which incorporates a participatory design, connects to the 4-H thriving model, and scaffolds the evaluation process into manageable steps which can promote youth and organizational evaluation capacity building. Inspired by the Skill-a-Thon model—an event which was originally designed to assess knowledge/skill development using experiential activity stations that program participants rotate through (Ullry & Wright, 2019)—the 4-H Healthy Living Ambassadors (HLA) program developed the “Evaluation Skill-a-Thon” to incorporate youth in the evaluation process
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