We are excited to be conducting an impact study of the Global Kids Online (GKO) research programme for the London School of Economics and UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti, using the OutNav approach.

In leading the study, I spent a couple of days with the Global Kids Online (GKO) team in London to map out how their work helps improve children’s experiences online, facilitating the team to express what outcomes matter to the programme.

It was a dreary, rainy and dark couple of November days in London when we met. However, the discussion was lively and we made great progress in setting out how the programme has been influencing countries around the world – working to understand and improve children’s experiences, positive and negative, of being online.

As usual for Matter of Focus, we started our work on this project with strategic outcome mapping. This is a participatory process of setting out how the project activities seek to contribute to outcomes using our headings.

Outcome mapping works best when a team can get together and spend time really thinking about and discussing how their work contributes to outcomes.

The Global Kids Online team (left to right) Daniel Kardefelt Winther and Kerry Albright from UNICEF Innocenti, Sonia Livingstone and Mariya Stoilova from LSE, with Sarah Morton from Matter of Focus (not pictured: Alessandra Ipince from UNICEF Innocenti)
The Global Kids Online team (left to right) Daniel Kardefelt Winther and Kerry Albright from UNICEF Innocenti, Sonia Livingstone and Mariya Stoilova from LSE, with Sarah Morton from Matter of Focus (the team also includes Alessandra Ipince from UNICEF Innocenti, who is not pictured.)

For this project we set out three main pathways where the project makes a contribution:

  1. How the work of the project team inspires and supports people around the world to conduct their own research about children’s experiences online.
  2. How the partner countries contribute to changes in policy and practice locally to improve children’s online experiences.
  3. How the project team pulls together information from partner countries and uses this to influence the international agenda.

The next steps

The Matter of Focus team, assisted by Alexandra Ipince from UNICEF Innocenti, will collate existing evidence and feedback against these pathways, and interview key stakeholders to capture more information on the impacts of the project over the last three years.

We have a small team working on this impact study, including associated researchers Helen Berry and Christina McMellon. We are looking forward to using our cloud-based software OutNav, to hold the project outcome maps and help us conduct collaborative analysis to unpick and understand the impact of the work.

We will be posting more here as the project unfolds and on Twitter @Matter_of_Focus

Read the Global Kids Online post about this impact study on their website.