Universal Challenges, Specific Contexts: Insights from Looking Within and Across Different After-School Settings

Evaluating Youth Drop-In Programs: The Utility of Process Evaluation Methods

“…Cousins et al (2013 ) identified the participatory evaluation approach as a collaborative relationship "that must be negotiated between evaluators and members of the program community … if collaborative inquiry in evaluation is to be meaningful, productive, and healthy" (p. 15). Deci sions regarding the evaluation were made by the collaborative evaluation team, including staff and board members, who decided what questions they wanted to ask, how data would be collected, who would be responsible for monitoring data-collection activities, who would be responsible for analyzing data, how data would be analyzed, and how the results would be disseminated ( Grinnell et al, 2012 ). This ongoing capacity-building exercise to encourage self-evaluation reflects one of the principles of empowerment evaluation that Fetterman and Wandersman (2005 ) define as "the ability to enhance the stakeholder's capacity to conduct evaluation and to improve program planning and implementation" (p. 35).…”

“…A participatory approach to evaluation was utilized that involved the execu tive director and board members, who worked with the evaluation consultants to ensure that the evaluation design was based on process and outcome measures that they considered important. We believe that participatory evaluation methods may be effectively used to substantiate the practice skills, knowledge, and competencies of those responsible for program evaluation ( Cousins, Whitmore, & Shulha, 2013 ;Fetterman & Wandersman, 2005, 2007Grinnell, Gabor, & Unrau, 2012 ;Mertens, 2010 ;Patton, 2008Patton, , 2012Smith, 2010 ). We contend that this practice note adds a much-needed "real-world" example of how process evaluations can eff ectively support youth drop-in programming by identifying the specific evaluation chal lenges we experienced in this neighbourhood youth centre.…”

“…Graphic representation of these data was important to the agency to show the large numbers of youth who attended, and it was part of the agreement when designing the evaluation strategy. Grinnell et al (2012 ) sup port this approach to reporting such data, noting that "using pie charts, bar graphs and other visual representations helps to communicate data to all audiences" (p. 41). These attendance data were organized into simple charts and graphs and presented to the local United Way by the executive director and board members.…”

Understanding afterschool engagement: Investigating developmental outcomes for adolescents

“…Attendance or frequency of participation in programs is not synonymous with engagement in programs, and is not enough to drive youth outcomes (Hirsch et al, 2010). Scholars have argued that evaluations of afterschool programs should emphasize the study of engagement, which would include measures of how students connect to afterschool activities, staff, and peers (Ehrlich et al, 2017). This is important because Fredericks and colleagues' (2014) systematic review of engagement in afterschool spaces showed that highly engaged youth experience more positive academic outcomes from afterschool programs than their peers with lower reports of engagement.…”

Increasing Latinx Youth Engagement Across Different Types of After-School Organizations

“…Most scholars describe the characteristics of youth development program types (Catalano et al, 2002;Eccles & Templeton, 2002;Futch Ehrlich et al, 2017;Mahoney et al, 2009). We rely on the following youth development program descriptions during out-of-school time to inform our study: • After-school enrichment programs offer experiential learning activities on a regular basis throughout the school year and are supervised by adults with opportunities of peer mentoring.…”