Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

How To Create A Logic Model – A Recap

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How to create a logic model
Use a logic model to help identify and address the needs of your youth

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been detailing how to create a logic model for youth work and youth ministry programs.

In case you missed any of those posts, we thought we’d offer a quick recap today of what we looked at.

How To Create A Logic Model

Part 1 – What Is A Logic Model?

The first week, we explained what a logic model actually is – that it’s a model you design that identifies the needs your young people have and helps you provide programs to address those needs.

We also gave a glossary of some of the terms that we’d be using in the series – terms like readiness, risk factors, protective factors and more.

Part 2 – Identifying Problems & Behaviors

One of the first steps of creating a logic model is to identify the problems your young people face and the behaviors they exhibit as a result.

This should be done by gathering both quantitative and qualitative data – from your young people, teachers, parents, agencies and any other kind of stakeholder.

Part 3 – Risk & Protective Factors

The next part was to identify the risk factors and protective factors facing your young people – check the post for a more detailed explanation of these two phrases and some examples of each of them.

Part 4 – Interventions & Programs

Once you’ve identified problems, behaviors and risk and protective factors, it’s time to choose what interventions and programs you want to use to address the issues your young people are facing.

Shae also listed three things to consider when putting these programs into place.

Summary

For parts 2-4, Shae provided some free example logic model downloads that she drew up based on the youth work she does. She’s a Prevention Training Specialist, so the focus for her programs relate to problems like substance abuse, teen pregnancy and low graduation rates.

There are many different types of youth work though, so when you create your logic model it could look much different to hers. If you work with homeless young people, you’ll likely identify completely different problems and behaviors to a rural youth pastor, who will identify different problems and behaviors to a youth careers advice worker.

There’s therefore no logic model that can be applied across the board for all youth – that’s why you’ll need to do the research yourself as to the needs of young people in your programs and local community.

It’s well worth the effort though, as it will help make your youth work or youth ministry far more effective in meeting the needs of your young people.

Question: What advice could you share with other youth workers about creating a logic model? We’d love for you to share it in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

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Creating A Logic Model – Interventions And Programs

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Logic model interventions programs
What are some of the goals you have for your programs?

We’re continuing our series on how to create a logic model for your youth work programs – you can find the different parts of the series below:

Once you’ve identified the problems in your local area (including negative behaviors that youth are exhibiting) and you’ve found out which risk factors and protective factors are important in the lives of your young people, then it’s time to pick your intervention or program.

Here are three things to consider when you’re at the stage to choose which programs you think will best address the issues in your community.

1. Curriculum

Decide whether you are going to create curriculum or buy it. If you’re in the US and considering buying curriculum, there are two reputable databases for evidence-based programs that are proven through research to address various problem behaviors:

2. Outcomes

Decide on the outcomes you are expecting – this should have already been started during the process of identifying problems and risk factors.

You should also start to set goals – both short and long term that can help you achieve them.

3. Evaluation

Be prepared to evaluate throughout your program and make changes where necessary.

Example

Using our example logic model from my locality, the following interventions have been chosen by my agency, our partners / coalition members and the local schools to address the behaviors and risk factors in our area:

To see these interventions in our basic logic model, click here.

Next week will be the last post in this series about creating a logic model.

Question: What are some of the interventions and programs you’ve started in your community following the research you’ve done? We’d love to hear about your programs in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

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  4. Signing up to our RSS feed

Image credit: See-ming Lee, Flickr

 

Creating A Logic Model – Risk And Protective Factors

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Risk protective factors
What are the risk factors causing your youth to walk a tightrope?

We’re continuing our series on how to create a logic model for your youth work programs – you can find the different parts of the series below:

The key to all the stages of creating a logic model is research. National and local research through databases and local community research and input through forums, focus groups, questionnaires or town hall meetings.

Today we’re looking at the second stage of the basic logic model – identifying risk and protective factors.

Risk Factors

These are the reasons why a youth may be making poor choices or feeling helpless / hopeless and make them more likely to be at risk.

Protective factors

These are the people, experiences and beliefs that may help youth make better or more positive choices when they’re faced with challenges.

How These Impact Youth

Theoretically, the more risk factors and fewer protective factors a youth has, the ‘worse’ the behaviors / problems are that they’ll be likely to experience; conversely, the more protective factors and fewer risk factors in their life, the ‘better’ a youth’s choices will be.

It’s important to note that this isn’t an exact science. There are plenty of youth with a lot of risk factors and very few protective factors in their lives who thrive, while there are some young people who seemingly have every opportunity but choose to throw it away with their choices. By working with research-based factors, you’ll be able to make a general picture of the area that has some support to back it up – not just based on your opinion.

What Affects Risk And Protective Factors?

Risk and protective factors are affected by the age / developmental stage of the child or youth. Children are more resilient at different stages, so a risk factor of an absent parent may affect a small child and a young teen differently, thereby creating more or less of a sense of ‘risk’ for them.

Types Of Risk Factors

Additionally, there are different types of risk factors. Commonly they’re referred to as ‘individual, family and community (school / work)’ here in the US. It’s also similar to the PCS model that I encountered in the UK, in which the personal, community and societal beliefs, values and experiences shape a young person’s views and choices.

Continuing to use our previous example, the local data where I currently work shows that the top three behaviors and problems for youth are Teen Pregnancy, Substance Abuse and Low Graduation Rate. You can use a lot of different sites and resources to get the evidence-based risk and protective factors. I’ve just used a search on the web for the purposes of this example.

Teen Pregnancy

Substance Use

Low Graduation Rate

Here is the current update to our basic logic model including some risk and protective factors:

Basic Logic Model – Risk and Protective Factors

Next week we’ll look at the possible programs, events and interventions that may address the behaviors in your area.

Question: What are some of the risk and protective factors you’ve identified for young people in your local community? We’d love to hear about your research in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

  1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
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  3. Liking us on Facebook
  4. Signing up to our RSS feed

 

Creating A Logic Model – Identifying Problems and Behaviors

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Youth problem behaviors
One of the problems in our community

We’re continuing our series on how to create a logic model for your youth work programs – you can find the different parts of the series below:

The first part of a logic model is identifying the problems that the youth in your organization and/or community are exhibiting and the negative behaviors that may be the result of those issues. Problem behaviors are, simply put, the things you can see that show that youth are making poor choices and/or feeling helpless or hopeless.

Problem behaviors may include drugs, drunk driving, suicides, cutting class, dropping out of school, fighting and much more. You’re not going to be looking at the possible causes at this point – that comes next week when we look at risk and protective factors.

In order to find out the problems and behaviors, you’ll want to gather both qualitative (the actual numbers) and quantitative (the stories/case studies) data. In terms of best practice, when it comes to community development principles you want to do your research into the statistics provided about a local area. You also need to do a needs assessment, including input from members of the community you’re interested in working with. This post won’t be exhaustive on the subject of research methodology, so I recommend Ground Rules for Good Research which helped me through my research methods module.

Quantitative Data – Numbers, Facts and Statistics

You can find out the quantitative data for an area in a number of ways – here are just a few:

  • Census data
  • Government websites and research
  • Questionnaires with numerical scales

Qualitative Data – Stories and Case Studies

A few ways to get qualitative data include:

  • Questionnaires with fill-in-the-blank sections
  • Focus groups
  • Town Hall meetings and/or forums

That’s not to say that you can’t get qualitative data from website research or quantitative data from focus groups, but some research methods are better suited to capturing data one way than another.

Using my own area and needs assessment for our logic model example, the first part of our model will include Teen Pregnancy, Substance Abuse and Low Graduation Rates. We found through a community needs assessment in 2011 that both data and community members identified these as the top three problems in our local area.

We actually had about 15 different identified problems affecting our youth, but narrowed them down to 6 and then 3 in which to focus our efforts. SAMHSA identifies that you can narrow these down by deciding what the largest problems are (through statistical and community data), how long it’s been happening and whether it’s getting worse, how serious the problem is and how it compares to other data.

Here is what the first part of our logic model will look like:

Basic Logic Model – Behaviors

Next week we’ll look at the Risk and Protective Factors that may be influencing the behaviors in your area, as well as how they might help or hinder the programs and events that you decide to provide in order to address the problems.

Question: What are some of the problems and behaviors you’ve identified for young people in your local community? We’d love to hear about your research in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

  1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
  2. Following us on Twitter
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  4. Signing up to our RSS feed

Image courtesy of Torben Hansen, Flickr

 

What Is A Logic Model?

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What Is A Logic Model
That seems more logical than a² + b² = c²

There may be times when you’re asked by your line manager or donors to provide the reasons behind why you’re running the programs that you do. And honestly, even if you aren’t asked for them, it’s always a good idea to know why you do what you do.

Strategic planning can help that. One way you can do some strategic planning is through the creation of a basic logic model.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll create a basic logic model to help you explain why you’re running the youth work programs that you do. I’d like to make this as practical as possible, so please consider sending in your answers to the ‘homework’ listed at the bottom of the post.

What Is A Logic Model?

A logic model is basically a diagram or framework that shows the steps you’ve gone through to identify the needs and solutions to the issues facing your young people and/or community. It also explores what resources you have available and how ready stakeholders are to address problem areas.

The example of a logic model that I’ll be working from is used in a prevention setting by SAMHSA to identify problems, risk and protective factors and possible interventions so that the problems can be addressed.

Here’s an explanation as to what all these terms refer to:

Logic Model Glossary

Resources – What do you have available to help support your youth work? Think of resources beyond just money – consider the people, venues, transportation options and community supporters you have at your disposal.

Readiness – How ready to change are your community, organization and young people? If your needs assessment shows that there’s a problem with sexual health issues in your area but the school and health departments aren’t willing to admit that there’s a problem, your community is probably not at the readiness level to accept an intensive sexual education, contraception and sexual health program and clinic in your area.

Problems and Behaviors – This is where you identify the issues. Are your youth having drug issues or teen pregnancy and sexual health problems? Is there a lot of fighting or bullying in your youth programs or within the wider community between groups of youth? Has there been a spike in teen suicide or depression among the middle schoolers? Does your youth ministry lose students when they reach a certain age?

Problems and behaviors might be identified by you, but they can also (and often best) be identified through a needs assessment. This is a process of finding out what the needs are in the community through various research methods.

Risk Factors – This refers to all the reasons why a young person might be at risk for negative behaviors or problems. Parents that are absent, peer pressure, learning difficulties, relatives that use drugs and low self-esteem can all contribute to a young person being at risk.

Thinking back to the PCS model, risk factors can come from personal reasons, cultural, family and community reasons or reasons from within the wider societal context. Having one or more risk factors in a young person’s life doesn’t automatically mean they’ll have problem behaviors though.

Protective Factors – These are all the reasons why a youth may be protected from negative behaviors or problems. A great support network in the community, having a family with good income, having natural resilience and motivation to succeed and caring teachers make up a short list of possible protective factors. Having one or more protective factors doesn’t guarantee a youth without problem behaviors, but it is more likely.

Interventions – These are the things you do as a youth worker – your programs, mentoring, calls and texts, events and organizations. Interventions are the things you do to help youth achieve their best in the future and avoid problems and negative behaviors.

It could be something small like a drop-in session once a week to talk about safe sex or a weekly mentoring group. Maybe it’s posters you put up at the school or a drug-free dance you host at your church.

Check out the rest of this series on how to create a logic model:

Homework: Between now and next week (please submit answers by Thursday, July 18th at 12pm EST which is GMT -5 hours), think of a list of answers for each of the terms above that apply to your youth work. I don’t expect a full needs assessment to be completed, but you probably have some ideas as to what’s happening in your community and with your youth. Then, contact us through email, Facebook or Twitter (see below) and we’ll use your answers to create logic models in the coming weeks!

You can also connect with us by:

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