PrEval Studie 5/2025

Digitalgestützte Evaluation von Digitalprojekten der politischen Bildung: „Ein Klick ist nicht gleichbedeutend mit produktiver Auseinandersetzung“

Susanne Johansson (PRIF) & Andrea Prytula (DeZIM)

More and more civic education projects use the digital space to implement their educational measures (also) virtually, tyring to make them more accessible and attractive as well as to initiate different educational processes in and on the digital sphere. In order to evaluate whether these goals are being achieved, it seems reasonable to use digital evaluation tools in addition to analog ones. It is precisely this interface between digitally supported evaluation and digital civic education measures that opens up a new field for evaluation research.

Through a comprehensive literature review in German and English-speaking countries and based on expert interviews, a focus group, the analysis of monitoring data, and a participatory methodology workshop, the authors have identified specific features, potential, challenges, and proven methods of digitally supported evaluation of digital civic education and derived recommendations for the further development of the field of evaluation of digital civic education. In addition, contributions from external authors present further methods from media and communication sciences, among others, and discuss ways in which they can be used in the evaluation of civic education.

Dr. Andrea Prytula holds a Doctorate in political science and works as a research assistant in the PrEval project as part of the specialist group on “Democracy Promotion and Democratic Practice” at the DeZIM Institute. Until 2024, she was involved in the scientific monitoring of the field of diversity management in the federal program “Demokratie leben!” (Living Democracy), where she focused on impact models, participatory evaluation, and the digitization of educational approaches. She is a Contextual Coach.

Susanne Johansson is an educational scientist and works as a research assistant in the Research Group on "Radicalization, Terrorism and Extremism Prevention" and in the PrEval project project at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). Previously, she was involved for many years in the evaluation of federal programs on democracy promotion, diversity management, and extremism prevention. Her research interests include political education processes, qualitative social research, and evaluation.

Frank Greuel, Dr. rer. pol., born in 1977, is an educational scientist and has been a member of the German Youth Institute (DJI) since 2009. Since 2025, he has been head of the research group on "Political Socialization and Democracy Promotion” research group. His research interests include the evaluation and scientific monitoring of projects and programs for the promotion of democracy and the prevention of radicalization, as well as educational and socialization processes.

Sally Hohnstein, MA, born in 1980, is a media and communication scientist, English/American studies and political scientist, and has been working at the German Youth Institute (DJI) since 2011 on projects in the field of extremism and extremism prevention, currently in the working and research unit on "Democracy Promotion and Extremism Prevention" (AFS). Her research focuses on right-wing extremism among young people and educational approaches to its prevention, including in the context of mediatization and post-migration.

Kai Rompczyk is an evaluator at the German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval) with a scientific background in empirical social science research. At DEval's Center of Excellence for Methodology, his work focuses on the further development and scaling of digital evaluation methods (e.g., geodata analysis) and the integration of artificial intelligence into evaluation processes.

Ralf Schmälzle, Ph.D. (University of Konstanz), is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University. His research focuses on how people receive and process mass communication messages — whether visual, verbal, or written — in various contexts such as entertainment, health, and politics.

Dr. Josephine B. Schmitt is a researcher and science manager at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum. Her expertise lies at the intersection of media psychology, communication sciences, media education, and science and technology studies. Her research focuses on extremism and political education, among other topics, and she develops materials for prevention purposes.