If Only 'a Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet': A Systematic Review on the Impact of Youth Work for Young People.

Background: Internationally there is an increasing commitment and investment to support the provision of youth work services and ongoing debate on youth worker effectiveness. However, the evidence of the impact of youth work is currently limited and disjointed. Objective: This article reports on and critically considers the results of a systematic review on the evidence of the impact of youth work for young people. Methods: The systematic review upon which this article is based reported on interventions defined by the authors of existing publications as youth work and which had young people as participants or the focus of the intervention. Results: The systematic review exposed the international absence of rigourously conducted evaluative research into the impact of youth work for young people. Conclusions: The article offers possible explanations for, and suggests implications of the results, through examining the context affecting practice and research where the definitional issues of youth work are concerned, suggesting that more rigour in design and consistency in the terminology of youth work be universally adopted by the youth work sector. This reclaiming of terminology is highly relevant to the case of youth work in Aotearoa/New Zealand ( Aotearoa is the indigenous Maori term: one of the three officially recognised linguistic terms for referring to the country commonly known as New Zealand, the third being in New Zealand Sign Language. Hereafter, the country will be referred to as New Zealand.), considered as a particular example of how imprecise terminology is both relevant to one jurisdiction and reflects the case internationally, as identified in the systematic review findings. The adoption of clear terminology, when combined with practice-based researched evaluations incorporating rigourous methodologies, will enhance the development of service and practice in (and support for), quality effectiveness research on youth work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]