Young People in Focus

SECTION 3

The Experiences of Parents and Young People

3.1 Limitations of the Evaluation Study

The initial intention of the project evaluation design had been to compare and contrast the experiences of parents and young people taking part in the five different interventions in the five service delivery sites. We had hoped to be able to draw out key themes that could indicate whether particular models of delivery might offer more to parents and young people than others. However, as the project progressed it became clear that the numbers involved were too low to be able to provide any significant or meaningful comparative data. There were also issues in relation to confidentiality in reporting the experiences of a small group of project participants – without identifying the parents and young people to the project workers and without identifying the individual project workers involved when reporting the data gathered. We therefore report in this section on parents’ and young peoples’ experiences overall rather than by the five different interventions delivered in the five project sites.

We have also had to reconsider our initial intention to identify impacts on truancy, antisocial and offending behaviour and on parenting and parents’ and young people’s relationships, using ‘Before’ and ‘After’ questionnaires. Again on reflection we recognise that the small sample size and lack of comparison group prevent us from drawing any conclusions that can be used beyond an understanding of what went on for this group of parents and young people taking part in this project. Therefore we simply describe below these parents’ and young peoples’ experiences.                                         

Without a large sample size and without a comparison or control group, we are not able to identify any causal link between any effects found for this group of parents and young people and the interventions they took part in during the project.

The ‘Before’ and ‘After’ questionnaires were distributed to parents and young people and gathered up by project site staff.  It is also possible therefore, that the information gathered using this method may have introduced a selection bias towards parents and young people who felt positive about the project rather than those who did not.  Parents and young people who were still involved with the project at the end of the intervention may have been motivated to complete the questionnaires because of their positive experiences of the project and particularly because they had formed good relationships with site staff.  We may therefore have heard more about the positives than the negatives for parents and young people.

In relation to the in depth individual interviews carried out at the end of the project, the initial intention had been to interview an equal mix of families that project staff felt had benefited and not benefited from their intervention.  However, not all projects were able to make contact with families who they felt had not benefited from the project.  Therefore the interviews involve more families that the project staff thought had benefited from the project and again this may lead to more positive responses than negative.

Bearing in mind these limitations, we report below on what was found by the Policy Research Bureau through:

• ‘Before’ and ‘After’ questionnaires completed by parents and young people
• Staff questionnaires completed retrospectively at the end of each young person’s and parent’s involvement with the project (whether or not they had ‘completed’)
• Individual interviews carried out with a small number of parents (10) and young people (8).

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