PEAR is excited to release Playworks' tailored statistical report. This report summarizes statistical analyses of social-emotional development outcomes by gender, grade, and race/ethnicity. PEAR tailored these analyses to better understand the impact across regions.
During the Fall 2021 – Spring 2022, Playworks’ youth (n = 710) completed based on data collected from PEAR's Holistic Student Assessment (HSA) survey. The HSA is a 61-item self-report questionnaire developed to assess social and emotional development of children and adolescents aged 10 to 18 years (grades 4-12) (Allen, Thomas, Triggs, & Noam, 2017; Malti et al., 2017). A retrospective self-change version of the HSA was used where youth responded to items by selecting the degree of change they observed in themselves since the beginning of their program.
Youth self-reported mean change scores were analyzed to see if they differed significantly from 3, a rating of “About the Same.” Figure 1 displays findings from the one-sample t-tests. If the p-value of a given scale was below 0.05, its mean change score was significant and unlikely due to chance. Mean change scores greater than 3 indicate positive change; those less than 3 indicate negative change, and those equal to three indicate no change.
PEAR’s Evaluation Services team met with Playworks staff to review the findings.
"Seeing statistically significant positive change on all 14 scales is not something we typically find. These results indicate a very promising program design for building youth's social and emotional development.” - Dr. Dawn McDaniel, Associate Director of Research, PEAR.
PEAR is proud to offer this statistical reporting service, which expands the utility of our data tools and dashboards. As more out-of-school and school organizations are using data, more stakeholders are asking for the evidence of impact. PEAR experts take on the technical aspects of statistical analyses. They develop a report that summarizes and visualizes the evidence of programmatic efforts and communicates any statistical significance. PEAR also meets with your organization along the way to ensure your team understands the findings and is ready to leverage this report in conversations with stakeholders.
"Thank you so much for presenting to the group this week. It was amazing to see the excitement and watch the wheels turn on how we can use this data for 1) motivation/validation 2) learning and 3) fundraising! So much goodness coming from this work." - Jennette Claassen, Director of Evaluation, Playworks.