Applying Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence to Identify and Measure the Social Impact of Youth Services on Children and Young People in Northern Ireland

This PhD project, in collaboration with the Education Authority, aims to capture youth work outcomes and impacts in Northern Ireland, assessing need, capacity and service provisioning across youth services. By linking diverse datasets provided by the Education Authority (EA), covering service locations, registrations, attendance, deprivation, demographics, youth programmes and service delivery, this research will provide actionable insights that guide targeted, responsive programming for children and young people. The project will harmonise these datasets for descriptive profiling, enabling real-time identification of service gaps, evolving programme needs and user barriers. It will also address bias in algorithmic profiling, a critical concern with socially sensitive data, by developing frameworks to identify and mitigate biases, ensuring fair and equitable data-driven decision-making within Youth Services and supporting inclusive programme targeting for all demographics. Underutilised qualitative feedback collected from Youth Service participants via surveys and focus groups will be analysed using natural language processing (NLP) to explore themes, sentiments, and lived experiences unique to youth. This analysis will inform programme development and provide insights into the social impact of youth work. Text analysis methods can streamline Youth Service funding application processes by evaluating eligibility and assessing cost-effectiveness of services by location and type. Automation tools, such as apps or chatbots, will be explored to improve survey engagement, enable real-time data collection, and reduce administrative demands. This research prioritises capturing the voices of socially excluded children and young people, ensuring their perspectives contribute to impactful, efficient service delivery. By integrating advanced data analytics and AI, the project will generate dynamic insights that enable youth work to be responsive and adaptive to evolving needs, supporting children and young people to thrive as active, engaged members of their communities. The project aligns with Ulster University’s Research Strategy, addressing inequality and diversity while advancing technological innovation in social data analysis. Collaborating with the EA, this research will deliver a scalable proof-of-concept model, applicable to other EA areas and potentially to devolved administrations across the UK. Comparative analyses will further validate the approach and offer broader frameworks for equitable, needs-based service delivery.