Youth organizations continue to seek ways to improve the quality of experiences young people have in their organizations; Funders continue to seek better ways to evaluate their investments. The YDSI Youth Survey offers a simple and cost effective way meet these needs for evidence of quality programming. The YDSI survey is designed to provide an assessment of current program quality as measured by youth experience. By measuring the supports and opportunities youth experience in an agency, this survey focuses on what happens in your organization and program(s). The YDSI Youth Survey can be used by organizations to identify its strengths and to discover areas for improvement based on direct input from the young people they work with. Rather than focusing only on youth's abilities, this survey asks youth to provide information about all of the developmental experiences youth get through participation in your programs. The YDSI Survey allows agencies to be accountable for what they actually can control -- the quality of the experiences youth receive in the organization. Other assessments focus on individual youth and their longer-term outcomes. While these outcomes are important, they are not always appropriate as measures of program accountability. Long-term outcomes are the result of a lifetime process of development and are influenced by other factors in families, schools and neighborhood that agencies do not control.

Dissemination Guidelines	email:  info@ydsi.org phone:  609.838.2636 fax:  609.581.1578	Youth Development Strategies, Inc. 4 Kosco Court Hamilton, NJ 08610