Professor Eric Chui’s research shows remarkable student progress in Government's programme for underprivileged local children
A PolyU research team, led by Professor Eric Chui, Head and Chair Professor of the Department of Applied Social Sciences and Co-Director of the Policy Research Centre for Innovation and Technology (PReCIT), has been working on evaluating the effectiveness of the "Strive and Rise Programme" commissioned by the HKSAR government. This Programme aims to lift underprivileged local children out of intergenerational poverty.
In recent interviews, Professor Chui shared the results of the first round of the Programme and discussed how his team conducted assessments of the participants, including students, parents, and mentors to measure the mentees’ performances before and after the Programme.
He explained that the evaluation was based on eight impact indicators, namely ability in goal setting, ability in financial planning, interpersonal skills and social network building, self-confidence, self-esteem, sense of responsibility and empathy, resilience, and sense of belonging to the community.
The research team invited mentees to conduct self-assessments through questionnaires and interviews and collected feedback from mentors and parents regarding the mentees’ performance. These assessments provided valuable measurements of the students' developmental changes and yielded insightful findings that can enhance the Programme and benefit more local students.
The evaluation results were encouraging, as the mentees considered that they had achieved improvements across all indicators. Equally important, their mentors and parents also acknowledged these positive changes. Professor Chui stated, “In research, we have found that 93.5% of students have experienced positive changes in at least one indicator, while 70.4% of students have shown improvement in at least three indicators.”
These findings affirm the effectiveness of the "Strive and Rise Programme" in empowering underprivileged local children, providing further motivation to continue and expand its positive impact.
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