Youth Engaged Evaluation: What we do, and what we know

Allyson Kelley
16 minutes ago
5 min read

AKA is all about engaging youth and the community in evaluation. Nothing about us without us comes to mind as a tagline we must remember. We are not new to youth-engaged evaluation; we are users and believers in the process because we have witnessed, firsthand, what happens when we engage youth and community in evaluation.

As you might imagine, there are different levels of youth involvement in evaluation. We have done them all at AKA. In some cases, a program we are evaluating may not involve youth as a target population or group, but evaluations can still benefit from their involvement.

We are not all-knowing, but the youth that we have worked with over two decades are.

Here are some examples and lessons about how AKA has engaged youth in a youth-led evaluation.

Youth were asked to take a photo of something that was meaningful to them during their experience at an SBRRC/ Native PRIDE Good Road of Life, Youth Leadership Conference. You can see from these photos that what is meaningful to youth is often very different from Likert-type surveys and scales that trained evaluators (adults) rely on for meaning. How can you translate a Navajo Burger photo with a 5-point Likert value?

#1 Lesson - Allow youth to define what is meaningful about an experience or program, ask youth to capture meaning in photos, words, art, or other ways that resonate with them.

In this youth-led evaluation example, a group of youth were asked to tell a story about their trip to Billings. In this story, they tell readers how they got to where they were going, their tribal affiliations, dreams and plans, and feelings. Here, youth tell their own stories (individually or as a group) and are honest about how they feel and what their futures hold. Again, an adult evaluator would get a different story if they wrote it, or interviewed youth about what was happening.

Lesson #2 - Encourage youth to write and tell their own stories about what is happening and how they feel. Don’t be tempted to overcollect, overanalyze, or create your own adult stories about who youth are, what youth feel, want, see, and know.

In this example, we modified the Sources of Strength 10-point scale into a 3-point Likert scale. We asked K-5^th graders to circle a RezDog that describes how they feel.

#3 Lesson - Use emojis and technology to reach youth and young people.

In this photo by Jaylen Aguilar, youth dance at Crow Fair, August 2025.

We have been finding ways to meaningfully engage youth and community in evaluation for over two decades. We are not always right, but what is right is paying them for their time and valuing what they know and share.

#4 Lesson- Find youth, train/learn from youth, pay them. They are everywhere, and they are the coming generation.

AKA Trains Adults in Youth-Led Evaluation

We’ve trained other people (adults) in how to do youth-engaged evaluation – these adults are not just in the U.S., they are adults doing evaluation in Germany, Africa, Guam, and American Samoa. This past year, AKA was asked to lead two webinars on youth-engaged evaluation for a client who serves the Pacific Southwest (which includes Guam, the Commonwealth of Northern Marian Islands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau, American Samoa, and Hawaii) and across the United States. In total, more than 300 people registered for the webinars, telling us that youth-engaged evaluation is a hot topic.

We asked our AKA Youth Evaluation Associates, Jaylen Aguilar and Sadie Posey, for help. They said yes! We paid them for their time- because we never ask people to do things without offering something in return, reciprocity is the value to live by.

Because we don’t sign up for anything that isn't fun, we created a Kahoot to learn more about our participants, what they wanted to know about youth-engaged evaluation, and what they already knew.

Here are some of their perspectives that matter in youth-engaged evaluation.

102+ participants played Kahoot with us during the webinars; 86% have youth in their communities to involve in the evaluation, but only 30% engage youth in evaluation. We asked participants, “What burning question do you have about youth-led evaluation?” They responded with three big things: engagement, how to do it, and recruitment.

Participants have knowledge and wisdom we don’t have, so we also asked them, “What is the best advice you have for youth living today?” They offered affirmations, motivations, logical suggestions, real advice like be proactive, and encouragement, like it will get better. This is a simple word cloud of their responses (note: word clouds are wonderful, but they don’t tell the whole story of who, what, why, and where, so always make sure to include a caption or label for context).

Because we are evaluators, we had questions for participants and used Kahoot to engage them in a discussion and sharing around youth-led evaluation. Here are some of our questions, and their answers.

Why do youth voices matter in evaluation?

Centering the Recipient- “Nothing About Us Without Us”

Nothing about us without us! Youth should lead efforts to help youth, because they know best what resonates with them.

Unique Perspectives / Youth know their own needs

They understand their needs better than we do. Programs are more relevant when they are part of the process.
Because it is their data and stories we are using to evaluate and consider care for them!

Creating Relevant Programming / Guiding Programming

The programs I create are for them, so they are the most important voice- and way more interesting
They need to let us know what works and what doesn’t work for them. Otherwise, what is the point of all my team's work?

Youth are the Future

The youth are the future and are affected the most by what we as adults decide. Having their input helps us create a better future for them.
They help change the future. As we get older, we are not in the full loop as to what’s going on in their world.

Here are some lessons we learned from participants in the youth-led evaluation webinars and from our own work with youth in communities doing evaluation.

Multiple methods work best.
We don’t need to evaluate everything.
Good things take time.
In-person works best.
We are storytellers.
Evaluation is part of the history and library of knowledge that will help our communities heal.