Youth Engagement Monitor

What is the Youth Engagement Monitor (YEM)?

The Youth Engagement Monitor is a syndicated research monitor tracking younger people’s (11-25 year-olds) involvement in. attitudes to and awareness of charities or pressure groups, as well as more general social topics and areas of interest in the United Kingdom.

Charities joining the syndicate benefit from reduced research costs and increased quality, as is the case for our other monitors, most notably the Charity Awareness Monitor.  By pooling their research budgets, participant charities are able to get a more frequent and more detailed insight into young people’s awareness of and attitudes towards charities and social issues than most charity research budgets could afford on their own.

Why track young people’s engagement in charities and attitudes towards social issues?

Young people increasingly represent a key audience for many charities for a variety of reasons.  From a fundraising perspective, young people are important for schools fundraising, as future donors and naggers of their parents – purveyors of parental “pester power”.

They can also be seen as embryonic campaigners and an important and interested target group for exponents (many of them charities) of active citizenship.  Furthermore, where, if not in childhood and/or adolescence, is adult awareness of and attitudes towards charity and the issues charities seek to address and services they carry out, formed? 

Finally, young people comprise a core group of service users and campaign beneficiaries for many charities, so being in a position to gauge their reactions to relevant experiences of these facets proves very useful indeed.  For these reasons and more, young people are an important stakeholder group in both the third sector and wider society, and an insight into their involvement and awareness would be valuable to many charities.

Who are the respondents and what polling methodology do we use?

Research takes place amongst a representative sample of 1,100 young people between the ages of 11 and 25 across the UK through an internet research panel. 

Every year there are two research waves.  Each wave consists of a regular set of quantitative research questions, the aim of which is to provide a trackable set of responses to be compared wave on wave.  These questions would thus remain identical over time (or as close to identical as possible).

In addition members have the option of putting forward new questions of particular interest to be included in the questionnaire, as well as having particular campaigns, descriptions (see below) and comparator organisations included for a more tailored and focused layer of benchmarking and analysis.

What do participating members of the syndicate receive?

All members of the syndicate  receive the following:

• A full set of data tables from the research;
• A PowerPoint presentation of the results;
• The opportunity to suggest new questions which are of particular interest and provide extra options for existing questions;
• The opportunity to attend two seminars a year debriefing and analysing the research waves;
• As appropriate, information about third party research on young people’s lives and lifestyles.

What kind of questions are asked?

Questions asked include the following:

• Which charities have you heard of?
• Can you name a charity that works in these areas (prompted list)?
• Can you name any charities that have visited/you have learnt about at your school/university?
• Which areas do these charities work in (prompted list)?
• How do you hear about charities and their work (prompted list)?
• How concerned are you with the following issues (prompted list)?
• Which of these campaigns/initiatives have you heard about and how did you hear about them (prompted list)?
• Which of the following actions have you done/would you consider doing(various prompted campaigning/volunteering/fundraising activities)?
• Which of these descriptions would you associate with the following organisations/charitable activities (various prompted charities, charitable activities and descriptor words)?  
• Do you go to a church or other place to worship?
• Demographics including mobile phone ownership, internet usage, ethnic background etc.

Current members

We have 12 charities currently taking part who are: British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), Christian Aid, the Children's Society, Missing People, NSPCC, Oxfam, Plan UK, RSPCA, Salvation Army, Scout Association, Shelter, WWF and YWCA England & Wales.

Timings and costs

The polling takes place twice a year, in spring and autumn.  The next wave of research will be conducted in May 2008.

The costs of the joining the monitor are:

• £5,500 (£4,500 for existing nfpSynergy clients) for organisations with a total annual income of more than £10m; 
• £4,000 (£3,000 for existing nfpSynergy clients) for organisations with a total annual income of less than £10m;

For further details on the Youth Engagement Monitor, please click here to email Lindsay Sutherland, or call her on her direct line: 020 7426 8863.