PrEval Studie 6/2025

Trust, Tone, Timing, and Tech
Assessing Digital P/CVE Counselling Services and Challenges for Evaluation Practice
 

Juliane Kanitz (i-unito); Maximilian Campos Ruf (Violence Prevention Network); Svetla Koynova (Violence Prevention Network); David Tschöp (Violence Prevention Network); Franziska Heil (PRIF)

Digital technologies are increasingly finding their way into individual counseling work in secondary and tertiary prevention. In addition to traditional telecounseling, interactive platforms, chatbots for initial contact and even the first AI-supported applications are now being used. These developments open up opportunities, but also pose new challenges for specialist practice and evaluation research: How can the quality and impact of such digitally supported services be appropriately assessed? And what methodological and ethical questions arise?

This PrEval pilot study looks at current developments in Germany, Europe and selected international contexts. Based on qualitative surveys such as interviews and focus group discussions in the period from 2024 to 2025, it maps key challenges, collects findings from initial practical approaches and develops practical suggestions on how evaluations can be designed in this dynamic field.

The results provide valuable starting points for evaluators, political decision-makers, funding providers and academia to further develop the quality management of digital counseling services.
 

Juliane Kanitz, Dr., is a scholar of Islamic Studies and a social anthropologist. She heads evaluation research at i-unito and develops methods to make impact and learning processes in online prevention visible. Her focus is on practice-oriented, qualitatively grounded evaluation.

Maximilian Campos Ruf is a scholar of Islamic Studies and social scientist with a focus on terrorism and security studies. He is the head of the Research Department at Violence Prevention Network gGmbH. His current areas of focus include international cooperation, collaboration between security agencies and civil society, MEL processes, and the study of hybrid radicalisation phenomena.

Svetla Koynova is a political scientist and a sociologist of religion with a focus on intercultural and transcultural management. Together with Maximilian Campos Ruf, she heads the Research Department at Violence Prevention Network gGmbH. Her research focuses include monitoring, evaluation, and learning processes, group-focused enmity, and radicalisation.

David Tschöp is a social scientist. From 2022 to 2024 he first worked as a student assistant and then as a research associate in the Research and International departments at Violence Prevention Network gGmbH.

Franziska Heil is a pedagogue and criminologist whose work focuses on extremist strategies and prevention at the intersection of research, practice, and public administration. At the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), she works in the project PrEval – Zukunftswerkstätten and is a member of the Research Group on Radicalization, Terrorism and Extremism Prevention. She also works freelance in youth care and teaches “Extremism” at the Hessian University of Public Management and Security (HöMS), Department of Police.