Data and measurement
Tracking our impact for young people.
How can we use new forms of data to better measure, quantify and understand young people’s empowerment?
The Issue
There are no commonly agreed measures of youth empowerment and participation. For instance, while there are 230 indicators under the Sustainable Development Goals, none of them measures nor attempts to quantify youth empowerment. This undermines the credibility of investments aimed at raising empowerment as their efficacy cannot be proven.
The Opportunity
There are increasingly large quantities of new data, a variety of sources of data and new technological platforms for engagement. These can help enhance our ability to measure empowerment across a range of outcomes, including more reliable indicators on self-efficacy, self-worth, being taking seriously, and making decisions in public or civic engagements.
Opportunities to measure the impact of empowerment of young people could improve effectiveness, transparency, participation and responsiveness of programming. This, in turn, supports more accountable monitoring, evaluation and thus more responsive planning for the existing and future investments made in young people’s empowerment.