On Wednesday, March 30, round table #3 in Poland on the evaluation of projects supporting employment/entrepreneurship of young people was held as part of the YOUTH IMPACT project.
This time the panelists were experienced researchers from the Polish Evaluation Society: Alicja Zajączkowska and Magda Urbańska. The meeting was chaired by Dr. Sławomir Nałęcz from FSLD.
The motto of the discussion was the question: How to conduct evaluation with active youth, and how – with inactive?
This question became the starting point for the exchange of experiences from many studies carried out on people from 15 to 29 years of age, taking into account both their level of activity and the varied level of competences and life situation (disabilities, family situation, past crises). Depending on the characteristics of the studied group, its diversity and attitude to evaluation – the scope, depth and methodology of the research will be different. Therefore, the participants of the meeting agreed that one of the first tasks of the researchers should be the initial diagnosis of the study group in order to adapt the way of conducting research to this. Experience shows that researchers must be prepared to change sometimes one of the methods, even during the evaluation, if it turns out that it does not provide reliable information necessary to answer the main research questions of the evaluation.
In addition, the discussion included many other important recommendations relating to 3 main issues:
- How to reach active and inactive youth?
- How to obtain information from active and inactive youth?
- Is it possible and is it worthwhile to conduct research on active and inactive young people?
Although 90 minutes were planned for the entire round table, the discussion turned out to be so interesting that the participants decided to extend the meeting a bit in order to exchange practical solutions to problems they encountered during the evaluation research with young people.The recording from this round table was posted on Youtube. You can find it HERE.
/by FRDL/
