Short Term Impacts Tool

Summary

The Short Term Impacts Tool is an online survey for young people who are participating in a program. The tool explores the dimensions emotional well-being, social support, future thinking, communication skills, and problem solving skills. Additional questions can be added depending on needs.

Further Details

The Short Term Impacts Tool includes a series of questions and validated scales to explore the following 6 dimensions for program participants:

Attitudes
Employment/study
Social support
Mental health
Problem solving
Optimism

The aim of the tool is to capture short term changes that take place at a group level and to provide agencies with a measuring tool that can demonstrate that their program had a positive impact on the development and mental well-being of program participants.

The tool has been created using Survey Money. Survey Monkey is a website which allows users to create and edit surveys, collect and analyse results quickly and easily. It enables users to view their results as they are collected, and allows users to create graphs and charts to obtain overall group responses as well as individual answers. The software is easy to use even for those with little or no experience in evaluation. The software has a privacy policy which states that all the data collected remains absolutely confidential.

Survey participants are given access to the survey through the Survey Monkey website www.surveymonkey.com or can be sent a link to the survey via email or sms. The survey guides participants through the survey which includes a range of response types – comments, scales, multiple choice, tick boxes.

Suggested Uses of the Tool

The Short Term Impacts Tool is most appropriate for programs which run for at least 1 year or are semester-based. It can be used to collect baseline data or to provide a snapshot of a group at a point in time. For programs of 1 year or more, the survey can also be used to provide data showing changes over time if it is implemented every 3-6 months. The survey is less appropriate for shorter programs since the dimensions which are assessed may not have had time to take effect.

Some questions in the Short Term Impacts Tool are identical to those used in the Long Term Outcomes Tool enabling a comparison of results at a later stage in time.

My-Peer Toolkit