Using Youth Participatory Evaluation to Improve a Bullying Prevention Program

We conducted a youth participatory evaluation of a bullying prevention curriculum before the curriculum was implemented in communities. We partnered with youths from a young women leaders' program to reduce the number of lessons in an existing curriculum and determine which activities were likely to have the greatest impact. To evaluate the curriculum, we used star-sticker surveys and written feedback provided by the youths and observational field notes recorded by adults. We found that the youths endorsed activities involving active learning approaches, we should include summaries at the beginnings of lessons, and we should include wording alternatives for implementers to use to improve understanding of complex ideas. We also reduced 26 lessons to eight lessons.