What is the Evaluation Lab?
The Evaluation Lab is another branch of the Impact & Insight Toolkit (still free of charge!), giving you access to new and additional templates.
Unlike the standard Toolkit surveys, they do not automatically include dimensions or encourage the triangulation approach to evaluation.
They have been designed to respond to specific ‘gaps’ we have encountered whilst working with the arts and sector, when it comes to evaluation.
If you’d like to learn more about the Evaluation Lab, please click here to read the dedicated blogpost.
What is the Children’s Survey (5-7 years old) template?
This template is to be used when you want to understand, in a measurable format, how your work designed for children is received by them. Parents, carers and teachers often provide feedback on activities and events designed for children and young people. While these perspectives are incredibly valuable, hearing directly from children and young people can provide unique insights into their experiences. This template has been designed specifically to capture and measure their feedback.
Despite the survey being designed for completion by young children, assume that they will need help completing it. With that in mind, we encourage you to ensure there are adults ‘on hand’ to provide necessary support.
What is contained in the survey template?
The template contains a survey with 4 questions. The survey makes use of emojis to support accessibility and engagement with the Likert-style questions. There are two open-ended questions at the end of this survey. They are appropriate to ask of this age group, but only when administered as a paper survey and they can choose whether to write or draw their answer.
As is standard with surveys in Culture Counts, there is flexibility built into the digital version of the survey. You can tailor the questions to your activity, participants and evaluation objectives, if you choose to do so. However, you can also use it exactly as it is.
In addition to the digital survey contained within the template, two fixed paper versions[1] are available: one for events; one for activities or participatory experiences.
To see a list of the questions included in the flexible digital survey template, click here.
To access a paper version of the survey for shows and performances, click here.
To access a paper version of the survey for activities and participatory experiences, click here.
Why should I use the survey template?
Using the standardised survey for children can help you:
- Gather feedback directly from young children
- Evidence outcomes for funders and stakeholders
- Identify opportunities to improve future activity
- Build a stronger understanding of your respondents’ experiences over time
- Demonstrate that you are giving children a voice about the quality of their experiences
How should I interpret the results?
Analysing the data you receive in the most suitable way is vital to establish the most accurate interpretation.
When it comes to the two open ended questions, look for commonly identified points between children. If you have more than 20 responses to these questions, and the results are saved in Culture Counts, you can use the Thematic Analysis Tool to provide summaries of the data.
When looking at the two Likert-style questions, calculate the percentage for the questions on how much they liked the activities and if they would do things again. These can be used to identify problems rather than nuanced differences between successful events. For example, a change from 80% to 95% which said they ‘loved it’ doesn’t tell you a lot, but a change from 5% to 20% saying they would not like to do it again should be looked in to.
Whilst we don’t recommend using the data to inform decisions in silo from other data sources, the answers the children provide are an indicator for the appropriateness and quality of execution of the work being evaluated.
How was it developed?
The design of this survey was informed by desk research into appropriate practices for surveying children, whilst simultaneously considering common challenges across arts and cultural organisations.
The first question to consider was whether it is appropriate to ask young children questions directly about their experiences. However, research conducted by Varni et al found that, generally speaking, children from the age of 5 can reliably self-report on recent and concrete experiences. This gave us confidence to move forwards with this area of work.
Research conducted by Coombes et al generally recommends using a dichotomous response format (only having two options) when surveying children aged 5-7. However, it is also considered good practice for there to be an ‘I don’t know’ or a ‘Not sure’ option. Therefore, we opted to go for 3 answer options: ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘Not sure’.
The use of emojis, also known as ‘smiley face anchoring’, is a validated approach for surveying children of this age. Work undertaken by Read et al explored this concept, and we are consequently happy to incorporate this into our survey template.
When should it be used?
As soon as possible after the event (be that a workshop, show or other experience), you should aim to obtain feedback from children. This helps ensure responses are fresh in their minds and accurately reflect their experience.
Sounds good – how do I access the Evaluation Lab and this template?
Firstly, you’ll need to have signed up to the Evaluation Lab. Please contact us by email and we’ll help you get set up.
Then, to create your survey using an Evaluation Lab template:
- Click ‘Create new evaluation’
- Choose to create from blank
- Click ‘Create new survey’
- Create from template
- Choose the Evaluation Lab
- Choose the survey titled ‘Children’s survey (5–7 year olds)’
- Click ‘Use selected template’
- Choose your delivery method(s) – Online, Interview or Display[2]
- Make any desired changes on the Design page
- Send the appropriate link to the adult that will be supporting the children with the survey’s completion
As a reminder, the survey for children is also available in paper format[1]. This is ‘fixed’ and does not have the same flexibility as the digital version, but is considered to be more suitable for surveying young children.
If you have any questions, please contact us.
[1] Please remember that, when you choose to use a paper survey, you will need to import the data to Culture Counts to benefit from the analytics and charts generated. For more information on this, please click here.
[2] As a reminder, the Online link is useful to distribute when you have email addresses, or want to use a QR code for people to complete surveys on their own devices; Interview works well in situations where one person is collecting multiple responses via a computer tablet or similar; Display works well when a singular device is being used by multiple people to collect multiple responses.
Access the list of questions and paper surveys below!