Out-of-school-time (OST) programs and their funders rely on sound data to make decisions about everything from professional development and student recruitment to the selection of activities to offer students. Programs operate at a range of times (before and after school, weekends, summer) and in a variety of locations (e.g., schools, community-based organizations, city parks, and recreation centers), are run by a variety of entities (e.g., government agencies, private community organizations), and receive funding from a variety of sources (e.g., government, philanthropy) — each of which may be interested in a different set of data and come with its own reporting requirements. This means there is a great deal of variation in the types of data programs collect.

In 2019, The Wallace Foundation (Wallace) commissioned Child Trends to conduct a study of the kinds of youth outcomes OST programs are interested in measuring, the tools they use to measure those outcomes, and the challenges they experience in doing so. The study included a literature scan and interviews with leaders and staff members at 28 OST programs. Twelve of the 28 also completed surveys; a separate group of 10 provided information by survey only. The study expands on past research by a) focusing on programs that work in specific content areas (e.g., the arts, civic engagement and social justice, career and workforce development) and b) covering both quantitative approaches (i.e., tracking numerical data) and qualitative approaches (gathering descriptive information through surveys, interviews, etc.) to data collection.

While its findings apply to OST programs in general, the study focused on particular types of programs (i.e., afterschool, summer, online) and particular content areas, as well as programs that serve school-age children and adolescents from marginalized communities, those that support students’ social and emotional learning (SEL), those that serve systems-involved youth, and those that focus on promoting equity — for example, by training staff to recognize and overcome personal biases or by recruiting and retaining leaders and staff who reflect the diversity of the participants served.