Yes_Sure

Mobile youth work is an outreach, lifeworld-oriented social support, counselling and assistance service that involves the municipal level. It is primarily aimed at a particularly vulnerable target group, namely young people with precarious chances of social inclusion and in safety-risk situations who spend the majority of their free time in public spaces. In this highly volatile social field, the measure pursues an intervention approach in which security work is essentially realised as increasing opportunities for social participation, promoting democratic political awareness and teaching peaceful conflict resolution skills.

Mobile youth work organisations are currently under great pressure to prove the effects of their work on a scientifically sound basis: Firstly, they must fulfil the professional demand for evidence-based, impact-oriented professionalism. Secondly, funding bodies demand proof of impact. The organisations themselves lack the expertise and resources to do this. Furthermore, impact research is generally a major challenge with such complex, highly contextualised forms of social intervention. There is currently a lack of both social science studies on mobile youth work and its possible modes of action as well as sufficiently complex research designs.

Using empirical social research methods, selected Mobile Youth Work centres in urban (Vienna) and rural areas (Lower Austria) will be evaluated. In the realisation of the project, target group- and topic-appropriate survey methods will be used.