Involving users in evaluation

“Designing our own evaluations makes us feel good”

Putting the people you work with in the lead of some part of your evaluation can lead to richer and more authentic feedback and builds your service users’ skills and confidence. This page has resources and tips on how to do it well.

Young people in charge of evaluation!?

In 2023, young people from the Scottish Youth Parliament were commissioned by Scottish Government to carry out an evaluation of Scottish Government funded mental health and wellbeing community support and services for 5-24-year-olds, their parents and carers. ESS’s role involved helping the young people consider different approaches to evaluation. Read more in our blog:

Young people in the lead!

From 2018-20 ESS was funded by The National Lottery Community Fund to support youthwork organisations to put young people in the lead of evaluation.

While it wasn’t always smooth sailing, project leads told us involving young people they support has helped their organisation as well as benefiting young people. Young people are fantastic evaluation problem solvers! 

For ideas and inspiration check out:

The videos below where young people talk about their experience of taking the lead on evaluation!

This short conference report:

Some top tips:

Quotes from young people themselves:

“It was an honour to be asked and included in something that is ultimately going to help future service users”

“I felt like this was good and it’s changed my view of what you guys do for us”

“I had fun!”

Case studies from third sector organisations

Further resources on the NPC website

You may also be interested in reading this NPC blog and resource about user involvement:

Full list of related resources