Revisions to the Positive Youth Development Measurement Toolkit: Strategies for Decolonizing and Contextualizing Measurement Approaches and Localizing Meaningful Youth Engagement

• In Event: Methodology

Proposal

There is an ongoing movement to recognize, reflect on, and respond to the problematic colonialization-related roots of international development research and practices. Progress requires making meaningful investments in and commitments to shifting from methodologies developed by the Global North to contextualizing our work within the lived realities of the Global South, in partnership with local researchers, practitioners, and youth. This active and intentional effort aligns with CIES’ 2024 thematic elements, specifically “that the status quo must be challenged and changed” in support of a “more just and inclusive” future.
In this context, YouthPower2: Learning and Evaluation (YP2LE) seeks to promote the localization and decolonization of methodologies in youth development programming and highlight recent evidence and best practices in PYD measurement by launching a revised version of the Positive Youth Development (PYD) Measurement Toolkit. This resource seeks to contribute to the PYD field by providing guidance on localizing PYD measurement within the context of the communities and youth at the center of PYD programming and ensuring that PYD approaches include the perspectives and expertise of participants and local experts from the Global South. Key considerations for revision also included enhancing the accessibility of Toolkit content and implementing a participatory revision process.
Since its development in 2016, the PYD Measurement Toolkit has been applied by PYD practitioners and monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL) specialists globally to enhance understanding of PYD programming. PYD is a strengths-based approach that focuses on youth-in-context and on building assets, agency, and contribution of youth via participatory action in an enabling environment with supportive policies and programs. Effective PYD measurement enables the capture of high-quality data through rigorous methodological approaches that are theory-predicated, build research evidence, contribute to building knowledge in the youth development field, and empower youth and adult allies to improve youth development outcomes.
The revised Toolkit is advancing effective PYD measurement by highlighting important evidence updates and providing guidance on PYD theory, research and evaluation study designs, ethical considerations, adapting measures to local contexts, and analyzing data and disseminating findings. By equipping, encouraging, and empowering PYD practitioners and researchers to better support and evaluate their programs, the Toolkit is expected to meaningfully contribute and support USAID’s newly released Youth in Development Policy (2022), which promotes locally-led and PYD approaches in monitoring, evaluation, and research activities . Furthermore, reference to the CIES conference theme, effective PYD programs should empower youth to engage their contexts with moral agency; the updated Toolkit will provide researchers with means to meaningfully evaluate the processes and impacts of civic engagement, including the “power of protest.”
The revised Toolkit highlights the following cross-cutting themes in its four chapters: decolonizing PYD measurement; meaningful youth engagement; and ensuring high-quality PYD measurement. The Toolkit seeks to provide guidance on these topics to key stakeholder audiences that include MERL specialists at international donor organizations as well as researchers in PYD programs. Throughout the two-year revision process, consultations and discussions on Toolkit content, audience, and themes involved multistakeholder information-gathering and consensus-building. The Toolkit revision process has been collaborative and iterative, to intentionally engage the voices of PYD practitioners, MERL specialists, and youth researchers regarding priorities for the revision of this important resource for the PYD field.
Activities in Fall 2023 that will inform finalization of the PYD Measurement Toolkit include a multidisciplinary stakeholder content feedback and consultation process, including with youth changemakers who have served as participants and team members on youth development MERL activities. More specifically, these activities include a session with a subset of PYD measurement experts that attended roundtable discussions held during the initial revision process to identify priority areas for revising the Toolkit content to discuss and review the final Toolkit content; a focus group discussion with specialists in PYD methods and measurement to explore measurement considerations and approaches related to localizing, adapting, and developing new tools; and a session to socialize the updated Toolkit with USAID staff and discuss how Toolkit dissemination can contribute to effective PYD measurement and build knowledge and awareness for future donor activities.
Toolkit content updates emphasize the importance of partnering with youth at each stage of the research process, providing capacity-strengthening support, and elevating youth in leadership and decision-making roles on the research team. PYD Measurement Toolkit revisions have embedded locally-led and decolonized approaches to youth development programming. Future work in PYD measurement should continue to promote strategies for implementing equitable, accessible, and contextualized MERL to optimize program outputs, outcomes, and impact.
Taken together, our proposed presentation will share updates in the ongoing progress towards embedding USAID’s Youth in Development Policy in youth development programming. Indeed, the power of protest, as a public act and in response to injustices affecting the lives of youth and beyond, is best realized when rooted in strong developmental and educational theory, and advances theory-predicated evidence bases towards those goals. Our presentation is therefore intended to serve as a timely and important demonstration and application of the PYD theory- and measurement-related advances presented in the updated PYD Measurement Toolkit.

Authors

• Diana Duff Rutherford, Making Cents International

• Chelsea Pallatino Trevelline, Making Cents International

• Sharika Bhattacharya, Making Cents International