What is the Purpose of this Survey?

In 2007 the Child, Youth and Family Services Coalition of Simcoe County formed a Youth Engagement Task Force. As defined by the Task Force, the purposes of the Youth Engagement project are as follows: build community capacity to engage youth in meaningful partnerships establish an overarching youth engagement strategy that would support youth engagement activities within and across agencies and sectors The Youth Engagement strategy includes steps to accomplish the following: (a) gather baseline data toward the completion of a report of the current state of youth engagement in Simcoe County; (b) develop a collaborative framework for a Youth Engagement strategy; (c) make the framework available to and support organizations who wish to implement it; and (d) conduct ongoing research to evaluate and improve Simcoe County's organizational capacity for youth engagement. This survey is the first step in gathering data to understand youth engagement in Simcoe County. In the future, we also are hoping to collect data from youth and use the information from both adults and young people to learn more about the engagement process.

Who are We?

We are a group of youth and adults from the Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement. The Youth Engagement Task Force has invited us to partner with them in this project, in an effort to better engage youth and serve their needs in Simcoe County. The Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement is a partnership of youth, youth-serving organizations, researchers, and adult supporters from across Canada, under the leadership of the Students Commission in Toronto and Brock University in St. Catharines. Our overall goal is to help understand and encourage youth involvement in activities that are meaningful to them and will lead to healthy development. Our Centre is partially funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada. We are asking for your help in obtaining more information about youth engagement in programs and services in Simcoe County.

How do we define youth engagement?

Youth engagement is the meaningful and sustained involvement of a young person in an activity focusing outside the self. It has three components: behavioural (e.g., going to an activity, attending a group), affective (e.g., caring about the activity, getting excited when the youth group is going well and getting frustrated when it is not); and cognitive (e.g., learning about the activity context, understanding more about the ways people interact).

What's Involved

The online survey will take about 30 minutes to complete. It includes questions about your experiences working in your organization, engaging youth, and/or managing staff who have experience engaging youth. We also ask some personal questions (about age, personality, and beliefs, for example), in order to help understand how involvement may not be the same for everyone. Finally, we ask questions to help us obtain information about youth organizations and the types of support your organization has in place to engage youth effectively. You also will be invited to participate in follow-up surveys every six months, for three times in total. This will help us track, on an ongoing basis, how your organization is doing with respect to developing an organizational culture that fosters adult-youth partnerships and youth engagement.

Why do it?

Your input is considered valuable to child, youth, and family services in Simcoe County, and will be used to develop a youth engagement framework. We hope that this framework will be useful tool for you in your work. Your experiences and ideas will also contribute to the work of researchers, youth, and people in other organizations who would like to know more about youth engagement.

Risks, Voluntary Participation, and Confidentiality

In participating in this survey, you will be asked to share information about your experiences. Although this information will be treated as confidential, some participants may be concerned that the information they disclose may cause them to lose status or be embarrassed. Participation in this study is voluntary and will not affect your involvement in your organization, the Child, Youth and Family Services Coalition, or the Youth Engagement Task Force. All personal information will be kept strictly confidential. Your decision to participate will be held in confidence; members of the Coalition, the Task Force and management at participating organizations will not know which staff have agreed to complete the survey. If you choose to participate, you do not have to answer any questions that make you feel uncomfortable and you can stop doing this study at any time. All information will be stored in secure locations and only the Simcoe County Youth Engagement Task Force, Centre of Excellence, and Brock University researchers will be able to use it. The Task Force will not have access to identifying information. Identifying information will be separated from survey data and only a code number will be stored with your survey. Only the project and computer managers will be able to match your name with your survey responses and we will not use names in any of our reports. We will keep the computer files of the data (without names) for possible future analyses; the surveys will be kept for at least seven years after publication of reports and then destroyed.

Results

The information we collect will be summarized in reports, which may be published in scientific journals, reports of the Child, Youth and Family Services Coalition of Simcoe County and the Youth Engagement Task Force, and Centre publications and websites, and/or presentations at conferences. We will share the results from this project with you through reports. We anticipate that the first report will be ready in the spring of 2009.

Ethics Clearance

This study has been reviewed and received ethics clearance through the Research Ethics Board at Brock University (File # 08-012). If you have any concerns about your rights as a research participant, please contact the Brock University Research Ethics Office at (905) 688-5550 ext. 3035 or reb@brocku.ca.

Contact Information

For any other questions please contact:
Heather Ramey Ph.D. Candidate Psychology Department Brock University heather.ramey@brocku.ca (905) 688-5550 ext. 4455 Linda Rose-Krasnor, Professor and Faculty Supervisor Psychology Department Brock University (905) 688-5550 ext. 3870 linda.rose-krasnor@brocku.ca Stoney McCart, Executive Director Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement (416) 597-8297 stoney@tgmag.ca

Consent

I agree to be part of the study described above based on the information I have read. I have had the chance to ask questions about the study and I know that I may ask questions in the future. I understand that I may change my mind and stop being in the study at any time. Thank you for your help in this project. Please print a copy of this form to keep in case you need to reach us.




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This research was commissioned by The Youth Engagement Task Force of the Child, Youth and Family Services Coalition of Simcoe County. The content does not necessarily represent the views of members of the Task Force or the Coalition, or their affiliated agencies.