The Case of Colombia - A baseline assessment from the Youth Resilience Assessment Tool

• In Event: Monitoring and Measuring Youth Resilience for improved programing: A case in Colombia

Proposal

The YRAT was used as an initial baseline for the first cohort of over 5000 youth participating in the CRYA during 2022. The assessment data was collected in 35 municipalities within 23 departments of Colombia and was analyzed to understand the demographic makeup, the resilience distribution of the participants and provide a few analyses to discuss learning questions set by the program. While the data can not be generalized for the country nor for the municipality, the information provides richness

During the initial analysis, the program assessed survey responses producing both individual report cards as well as municipal ones. Based on the analysis, the team was able to learn about how to best tailor programmatic initiatives as well as uncover various challenges during the implementation process and how to improve with the following iterations.

The team conducted an extensive review of the data. On the socio-demographic front, the team conducted both the descriptive statistical and Cohen D analysis to understand the practical significance of varying demographic factors. We found that while there was no practical significance between gender, other factors such as afro descendents, school enrolment, and victimization did demonstrate significance. In terms of the distribution of resilience levels of the participants, a large majority of the youth aged 10-14 ranked in level B (resilient), while the distribution of youth aged 15-29 was significantly split between level B and C (low resiliency).

Furthermore, the team plans to use the responses from the tool to provide evidence for the learning agenda. The learning agenda seeks to answer the following questions: 1) what risk or protective factors have the highest impact on a youth’s resilience, and does it vary by demographic factors, 2) Which factors most correlate with the abuse substances, or delinquent behavior, 3) Which factors most correlate with the the a strong social network or high self esteem. The first question will be analyzed by running linear and multivariable regressions. The second and third question, will be answered by running correlations to further understand what factors most align to the lack of and presence of the risk/protective factor in question.

In the following months, the team will work to analyze the data in response to these learning agenda questions, as well as present the findings of the baseline.

Authors

• Enrique Maruri, ACDI/VOCA

• Ana K Gonzalez, American Institutes for Research