How Do We Measure Youth Engagement?

The ENGAGED Youth project relies on a strong quantitative evidence base that helps us understand how youth take part in their communities and wider society. This data is collected through the international Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, which include survey data from more than 50 countries.

Through this study material, we measure a range of factors such as political and civic participation, and experiences of social, cultural, and political identity across the ENGAGED Youth partner countries. This enables us to explore variations between different youth groups across diverse national and social contexts.

Alongside this quantitative foundation, the project also gathers rich qualitative material from all five participating countries, including through our Living Labs. These qualitative insights allow us to explore youth’s experiences and perspectives in depth. Combining both approaches provides a broader and more nuanced understanding than either method could offer on its own.

Together, these data sources forms the basis for developing a new measurement scale for youth engagement, a tool to help researchers, practitioners, and policymakers better understand how young people participate and how their engagement can be strengthened.

The project will identify both the formal and informal structures that shape youth democratic participation. Policy initiatives will be co-created with youth and policymakers through the Co-Create Dialogue Forum tool. Particular attention will be paid to the inclusion of marginalised groups, both within the research process and in the formulation of policy recommendations.

You can read more about the background for this work in an article (in Norwegian) published by Universitetet i Bergen and Utdanningsforskning. To learn more about the HBSC study, visit the international HBSC website and the HBSC Norway pages.