Measuring Youth Participation, Program Quality, and Social and Emotional Skills in After-School Programs

Abstract

This chapter builds on a series of presentations on evaluating the outcomes of after-school programs that were presented by the authors at the Youth Nex, Let's Talk After-School conference. The first section of the chapter is organized around the Quality, Engagement, Skills, Transfer (QuEST) model, a logic model of skill development and transfer theories that developed out of work with after-school systems. Specifically, measurement issues for three components of this model, quality, engagement, and social and emotional skills are outlined. Next, a case study of an evaluation of the program. Girls on the Run, is presented. The chapter concludes with a discussion of measurement challenges and implications of these challenges for programming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)