Research, Monitoring & Evaluation

Together with her partners, Rutgers Nisso Groep’s international programme for youth and sexuality, Youth Incentives, strives for high quality and effectiveness of her projects and services. Research, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) play a central part in achieving this. Rutgers Nisso Groep has a long research tradition of conducting research on sexual behaviour in the Netherlands and is now, through their international programme, expanding her research activities to other countries.

For interventions to be effective and increase their quality, it is important that they fit with young people’s perceptions, ideas, meanings, needs, experiences and realities. Because these differ in different countries, contexts and groups of young people, research (both qualitative and quantitative) needs to be conducted and project activities need to be monitored and evaluated to find out if they are successful in improving young people’s sexual and reproductive health and well-being.

Both research and M&E are based on the RAP-rule and thus youth participation plays an essential role in it. This includes the active involvement of young people in the process that takes place before, during and after implementation of projects: research, planning, design, monitoring and evaluation. If young people participate meaningfully, their needs, concerns and realities are taken into account more effectively, which will improve the overall quality of programme policies and intervention strategies. After all, young people are the best advisors on how and where to reach other youth. Meaningful participation can also help to empower young people. Through participation, young people will gain skills, experience, ownership and self-confidence.

Youth Incentives supports partner organisations in conducting research and M&E by developing tools, protocols and training manuals to build research capacity of staff and young people and by providing technical assistance. Research and M&E activities will help to collect evidence for effective interventions and help to improve institutionalized learning, documentation, adaptation, sharing, transparency and accountability.