Boston Youth Arts Evaluation Project
Tools
The project developed and tested five different sets of evaluation
tools:
- Beginning Self-Evaluations and Final Self-Evaluation:
This is the basic pre- and post-test model where most of the
questions are the same in the beginning and final evaluations.
Youth fill out Self-Evaluations in the first three weeks of
the program and in the last two weeks of the program in order
to measure the short-term program impact. Inspired by: Search
Institute (2004), Lerner, R. M., & Israeloff, R. (2007),
Forum for Youth Investment (2008), Oyserman, D., Bybee, D. &
Terry, K. (2006), Oyserman, D. (2007), Brooks, McCarthy Ondaatje,
& Zakaras (2005), and Massachusetts Board of Elementary
and Secondary Education (2008).
- Program Evaluations: Feedback from Youth: Youth
evaluate the programs in which they are involved at the end
of their program cycle. We used some elements of the retrospective
evaluation when we designed our Program Evaluations to both
measure the program effectiveness and to encourage youth to
think back on what they were like before the program. In doing
so, they could compare differences between their past and current
states and consider whether changes resulted from their involvement
in the program. Inspired by: National Research Council and Institute
of Medicine (2002), The Forum for Youth Investment (2007), Little,
Dupree & Deich (2002), Bouffard, Little & Weiss (2006),
Smith & Hohmann (2005).
- Alumni Surveys: Our Alumni Evaluation was designed
as both a survey of current lives and as a retrospective evaluation,
inviting young adults to reflect on what they experienced and
gained in their time with our organizations. Program graduates
complete an extensive survey online or in hard-copy form. Inspired
by: Gittleman (2007), Csikszentmihalyi & Schneider (2000),
Catterall (2009), and Gambone, Klem, & Connell (2002)
.
- Teacher Evaluations: These were designed as
a combination of observations and case studies on individual
youth where teaching staff completes an evaluation on each youth
in the beginning and at the end of the program. Inspired by:
Massachusetts Arts Curriculum Framework (1999), Seidel et al
(2009), Hetland, Sheridan, Veenema, & Winner (2007), and
the “5 Processes” by Larry Scripp in Rabkin & Redmond (2004,
p. 42).
- Artistic Response and “This program is like!”:
These creative, open-ended responses offer the widest range
of expressive opportunity. Youth respond through drawing and
creative statements at the end of the program to what they feel
has changed due to their experience in their program. This incorporates
the power and voice of youth as artists in drawing their responses
and helps them speak in metaphors to more richly describe their
experience. Designing these tools works best when each organization
can match the creative tools to the arts modalities that they
offer.
All five
of these tools can be found in the BYAEP Workbook
(PDF)
NEXT:
Overall Reflections on Evaluation & BYAEP
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© Mass Cultural Council 2018 |
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