Evaluating Youth Empowerment: The Construction and Validation of an Inventory of Dimensions and Indicators

Abstract

Empowerment is a concept that has become increasingly used over recent years. However, little research has been undertaken into how empowerment can be evaluated, particularly in the case of young people. The aim of this article is to present an inventory of dimensions and indicators of youth empowerment. The article describes the various phases in the construction and validation of the inventory. These phases were (1) a contrast of the inventory of dimensions and indicators against specialized published writings on youth empowerment; (2) the validation of the resulting inventory by experts; and (3) a contrast with young people through four participatory evaluation processes and six life stories. The tool is scientifically and practically useful and enables the impact of youth empowerment programmes to be evaluated; it also serves to plan and implement socio-educational processes aimed at influencing the empowerment of young people.

Student Change Agent Model: How School Counselors Can Operationalize the Advocating Student-Within-Environment Framework to Promote Student Empowerment

“…Understanding the current state of student empowerment requires a valid and reliable tool that can measure student empowerment directly. Currently, few tools have been developed to measure this concept, and those that exist have not been validated by further studies (Planas-Lladó & Úcar, 2022). Once an effective tool exists to measure student empowerment, research can focus on assessing current levels of empowerment in students and changes in empowerment levels as a result of counseling interventions.…”

Evaluating Collective Action for Effective Land Policy Reform in Developing Country Contexts: The Construction and Validation of Dimensions and Indicators

“…For the selection of experts, we preferred that they work in land management, urban planning, architecture, human ensure geography, and other related fields and are from developing countries such as Morocco, Ghana, Rwanda, Iran, India, Indonesia, China, Mexico to ensure the professional and scientific validity of their opinions. The judgments about measures of experts' attitudes to the indicators were measured on a 5-point Likert scale with criteria including comprehensibility, clarity, measurability, and relevance [104].…”

Evaluation of Youth Empowerment Projects From an Educators’ Perspective

“…This requires two conditions: that the person acquires and develops a series of personal abilities (knowledge, attitudes, aptitudes, skills …) and that the environment facilitates the effective exercise of such abilities. (p. 22) In the framework of the same project, the initial set of personal and community empowerment indicators (Soler et al, 2014) were adapted specifically for youth empowerment (Planas et al, 2016a;Planas-Lladó & Úcar, 2022). Once adapted, a validation process was initiated in three phases: an academic validation through a literature review (Úcar et al, 2016a), a validation by experts in the field of youth work, and a validation of practice with young people (Llena-Berñe et al, 2017;Úcar et al, 2016b).…”

“…Once adapted, a validation process was initiated in three phases: an academic validation through a literature review (Úcar et al, 2016a), a validation by experts in the field of youth work, and a validation of practice with young people (Llena-Berñe et al, 2017;Úcar et al, 2016b). The result of this validation is a set of nine dimensions and 27 indicators of youth empowerment (Planas et al, 2016a;Soler-Masó, 2020;Planas-Lladó & Úcar, 2022). This set of dimensions and indicators is the basis on which the HEBE Rubric was developed (Corbella Molina et al, 2021).…”