Now that you’ve prepared for your CQI cycle, it’s time to use your Club’s data to ASSESS your Club. It’s important to gather as much data as possible for the assessment to be effective. This page will help you gather data about your Club or Youth Center from the following areas:

• Quality Practice
• Attendance and Participation
• Youth Outcomes
• Club Experiences

For more information on each data category, download the Data Buckets description document.

Virtual Club CQI

COVID-19 has presented challenges that Clubs, and Youth Centers have never faced before. This makes assessing program quality using a Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) process for virtual programming much more important. The CQI process helps Clubs build and maintain quality programs. Use the Using Data to Improve the Virtual Club Experience guide to help you navigate continuous quality improvement in the virtual space. Use the Virtual Club Quality Standards to gain insight on key quality components to include based on the type of virtual session offering. You can also find specific guidance on how to adapt the Youth PQA for virtual use by clicking here.

Quality practice data assesses your Club’s use of quality after-school practices such as staff interactions, incorporating youth voice, and creating a youth-centered learning environment. Boys & Girls Clubs of America has partnered with the Forum for Youth Investment, and the Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality to provide trainings, tools and resources for using the Youth Program Quality Assessment (YPQA), a research-validated measure for youth program quality.

The information provided in this section will support the Youth Program Quality Assessment Tool (YPQA). If you are using another quality assessment tool, or would like to explore other quality assessment options, you can skip the YPQA portion of this section and continue to our remaining data categories.

Youth Program Quality Assessment tool (YPQA)

YPQA is a research-validated tool designed to measure the quality of youth programs and identify staff training needs. Please download the assessment below and participate in the PQA Basics training course to learn more about using this assessment in your program.

Self vs. External Assessment

The Youth PQA has two methods of administration: Self Assessment and External Assessments. Both play an important role in collecting key program quality data. Use the Self vs. External Assessment document to deepen your understanding of the process.

PQA Planning for Self-Assessment

These following tips help you recruit your assessment team and develop a plan to conduct self-assessments.

Youth PQA Staff Training Materials

Staff should be trained on YPQA before starting the self-assessment. YPQA is designed to help Clubs work as a team to improve practices. Below you will find materials to support a one-hour training on YPQA Basics.

Consensus Meeting

When conducting self-assessments, it is essential to get a variety of staff involved in the process. After staff watch a variety of program activities and all data has been collected, the site leader guides the team in scoring a single, Club -wide PQA. This scoring process can last three hours or more and may be divided among several shorter meetings. During the scoring meetings, the team will pool and review all anecdotal records and go through the PQA item by item, selecting an anecdote, and agreeing on a score for each. The Consensus meeting Agenda and Power Point Deck will guide you through that process.

Attendance and participation data is any information that tells you who is coming to your Club and how often. Examples include, attendance logs or database tracking of attendance, program participation, and demographic information.

Youth Outcomes data reflects information Clubs collect to measure the success of key program indicators, such as school attendance, literacy measures, learned skills etc. Examples of tools that measure Youth Outcomes are the NYOI: Academic Success, Good Character & Citizenship and Healthy Lifestyles measures, Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), academic information from schools, social-emotional learning measures, Survey of Academic and Youth Outcomes- Youth Survey (SAYO-Y), Survey of Academic and Youth Outcomes- Staff Survey (SAYO-S), program pre/post-tests, etc.

Club experience data represents information that speaks to how participants, members, parents and other stakeholders experience your Club and the programs and activities within it. Examples are NYOI Club Experience data, Pulse Checks, program surveys, focus groups, parent surveys, Survey of Academic and Youth Outcomes- Youth Survey (SAYO-Y), etc.

Pulse Check Guide

This guide explains how to collect real-time feedback about your Club Experience. It shows you how to conduct quick, easy and inexpensive pulse checks. Do these in between annual administrations of the NYOI surveys.

We suggest using listening sessions and parent surveys for pulse checks. Listening sessions provide a safe environment for members to express excitement, concerns and make recommendations. Parent surveys give you information about parents’ needs and interests, along with their feelings about their child’s Club Experience.

Need more information on the YPQA? Not sure what to do with your Scores Reporter account? Could you use some thought partnership in deciding what data to collect during your Assess phase?

Check out our CQI Training Series!

Our training series is designed to help Clubs move through CQI from launch to celebration, based on best-practice timelines for quality improvement. Click the CQI Training Series page to view training descriptions and upcoming opportunities.