Illustrative analysis of surveys on participant structure and the impact of events

Summary

The CorrelAid-project team evaluated several surveys among participants of events of the European Youth Parliament. The focus was, firstly, on socio-demographic factors such as age, gender and origin of the participants. Secondly, the impact of the respective event on the attitudes of the participants was evaluated. The team consisted of a project lead and three analysts.

The Challenge

The aim of the project was to present the data from the surveys to give the European Youth Parliament an more detailed picture of who participates in their event and to highlight the effect of the EYP events on the attitudes and skills of the participants. In addition, the work with the data was to be used to make a recommendation on how the European Youth Parliament could carry out independent analyses in the future and what improvements it could seek in the design and implementation of the survey.

The Data

Basis for this project was a broad and systematic attempt by the EYP to evaluate their events. The EYP conducted three surveys at five of their international events in different cities in Europe. These were a preliminary survey before, a survey immediately after and a survey three months after the event. The “Active Volunteers”, i.e. volunteers from the EYP itself who also participate in the event, were interviewed twice, during the event and also three months after the event. The number of respondents varied between approximately 20 and 130, depending on the city and type of survey. The number of questions also varied between 26 and over 150, depending on the city and type of survey.

The Solution

The CorrelAid project team helped the EYP team gaining new insights into the structure and background of the participants in the EYP events. The aim was to show the development of different items, such as attitudes of participants, before and after the event. This was achieved by estimating the mean values and presenting them in diagrams. This made a direct comparison possible, which should give the organisation an idea of the impact of the event on the participants’ evaluation of the items. Note that causal interpretations are not warranted given to the data structure. The surveys were evaluated with R.

The Impact

The results of the data analysis were summarised in a report that was handed over to the EYP in a joint video conference. The used methods were explained, results were discussed and additional factors of interest were added afterwards. The report contains suggestions for improvement of the data collection and survey in order to achieve results that are more reliable in the future. The team recommended to make the surveys more consistent, e.g. by using the same set of questions across the events, to make sure that results are comparable and to make future anlyses easier. The EYP has learned from the analysis that the events carried out were generally very positively evaluated by the participants. A difference in the pre- and post-event means was observed for some items of interest.