“Ripple Effects” in Youth Peacebuilding and Exchange Programs: Measuring Impacts Beyond Direct Participants.

A number of organizations have a mission of encouraging peace throughout the world by enhancing young people’s knowledge and understanding of other countries and cultures. One strategy used to further this mission is international or intercultural exchange programs. Most evaluations of exchange programs gather data only from the direct participants who traveled to another country. But these programs have the potential to have impacts that expand beyond the direct participants—or “ripple effects.” Thus, a more appropriate methodology to evaluate exchange programs is “360-degree feedback,” which gathers data from multiple sources. This study uses 360-degree feedback to evaluate a youth peacebuilding and exchange program by gathering data not only from the exchange students but also from chaperones, host families, and students and teachers in the host school. ANOVA analyses finds that the program had positive impacts on the exchange students and, in many cases, even greater ripple effects on indirect participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]