HUWY D6.2. User engagement report

Taylor-Smith, Ella; Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, Pille; Visnapuu, Triin

Abstract

The User Engagement Report assesses HUWY project?s success in engaging its two main user groups: young people and policy-makers. 1. Did the HUWY project achieve its objectives in engaging young people? What were the affects of that engagement? 2. Policy-makers have a crucial role in the HUWY project as an influential audience for the ideas discussed and refined by groups of young people, as part of the HUWY process. Did the HUWY project manage to persuade and support policy-makers to fulfil this role? How did they feel about their involvement? As this engagement is central to the HUWY project, the data and analysis in this report enable us to assess whether we were successful in meeting our 7 Key Evaluation Factors. It also enables us to review our success in meeting most of our project objectives1. The HUWY evaluation methodology followed in this report resembles current best practice in eParticipation evaluation: * working with stakeholders to add more detail our choice of objectives and success factors; * addressing objectives from social, technical and political perspectives; * using a triangulation of instruments to gather data, enabling more accurate and meaningful results; * highlighting results using Key Evaluation Factors. During the first phase of this evaluation, the HUWY team worked with young people and policy-makers to investigate the evaluation factors and outcomes that are most important to them. Their ideas added more specific detail to the project objectives and influenced the evaluation methodology. Their preferences were used to highlight certain objectives as Key Evaluation Factors. A detailed methodology was established, using a triangulation of data collection techniques to support accurate and meaningful results. Inputs from users (young people and policy-makers) are at the heart of this evaluation. The process of investigating young people and policy-makers? engagement criteria, and the evolution of the project methodology and instruments is described in D6.1 Engagement and Impact Criteria. This report follows directly on, describing the implementation of this methodology, results, analysis and conclusions. The main user engagement results are that the HUWY project successfully engaged young people in discussions about Internet policies and this seems to have been a positive experience for participants. Most participation took place offline: the eParticipation aspects of the project were less successful. While the Estonian team exceeded their target number of participants, participant numbers in Germany, Ireland and the UK were disappointing. All HUWY teams succeeded in getting policy-makers involved in the project, though levels of feedback about young people?s posts were rather low. This report is specific to user engagement. There are two other HUWY reports which combine to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the project: * D7.3 Sustainability and scalability plan assesses the implementation of the HUWY distributed discussion model and hub website technologies, in order to identify future possibilities, challenges and recommendations for anyone following similar eParticipation methods. * D7.4 Results is the final results report of the HUWY project, which identifies the main outcomes of the HUWY project, including impact on decision-making and policy, contribution to eParticipation research and practice and the European public sphere.

Citation

Taylor-Smith, E., Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, P., & Visnapuu, T. (2011). HUWY D6.2. User engagement report

• Report Type: Technical Report
• Publication Date: 2011
• Deposit Date: Aug 24, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 31, 2011
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: Hub websites; youth participation; eParticipation; policy-makers; engagement
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/4599
• Contract Date: Aug 24, 2011