After-School Initiative's Toolkit for Evaluating

Toolkit for Evaluating Positive Youth Development 6
parents and youth the option NOT to participate. In addition, child assent forms should be signed by all youth participating in the
evaluation. Consent and assent forms approved by The Colorado Trust and required for all ASI programs are provided in Appendix IV.
NRC evaluation liaisons may assist ASI program staff in customizing the forms for use with their individual programs.
Understanding the Rights of the Survey Participants
Respect for the participant is the cornerstone of ethical research, including maintaining the confidentiality of participants. If a participant
discloses his/her survey responses, program staff is not allowed to discuss that information with anyone unrelated to the evaluation. Even
if a respondent asks program staff to disclose an answer given in the survey, staff is not permitted to do so.
Confidentiality: Program staff should remind participants of their confidentiality rights whenever it is appropriate, and refer to
participants’ consent and assent forms, which guarantees these rights. The only exception to confidentiality: If the respondent shares
information revealing that they might harm themselves or others, then program staff must follow procedures that are legally mandated to
report such information.
Voluntary Participation: Evaluation participants cannot be forced to complete a survey. Instead program staff should stress the
importance to the program in learning how best to deliver after-school services. Participants are free to not answer individual questions and
their involvement in or withdrawal from the evaluation has no impact on the services they receive.
Developing the Survey
The questions included in this toolkit are quantitative in nature with fixed-response options (except for a few open-ended questions).
Individual ASI programs may want to augment these quantitative data with other forms of more qualitative data and anecdotal information
such as journals, photos or narratives depicting what youth participants have learned. Some helpful guidelines are:
Keep the survey short and to the point: The simpler the survey, the more likely it will be understood and completed. To enhance
simplicity, only question sets that pertain to a particular program should be used. In addition, program staff should only use question sets
that are at literacy and comprehension levels appropriate for the youth those programs serve.