guidelines Interpretive guidelines How should the results be read? Why base our classification on the one used by the World Bank? Glossary of words used throughout the report Visits: total number of connections to the youth-talks.org consultation website(landing may be via the survey itself or the initiative’s institutional website). Participant: anyone answering at least one question (open or closed) in the consultation. The term “respondent” is also used in this report to refer to someone who has answered a particular question. Thus, a figure calculated according to the total number of respondents gives a percentage based on the number of people amongst the participants who actually replied to this particular question, whereas a figure calculated according to the number of participants gives the percentage based on the total number of participants, including those who did not specifically reply to this particular question. To make things clearer, the percentages used in this report have always been calculated according to the number of respondents to the question analyzed. Segmentation factor: characteristic of a participant, collected by means of a closed question. These variables allow us to establish the profile of our participants and note if responses differ according to segments. The segmentation factors collected in the context of Youth Talks relate to the country where the participant grew up, their activity (student, working, etc.), their age, their gender, their educational level, their parents’ educational level, and the income group in which they would place their family compared with other households in their country. Contribution: any response to a question (open or closed). Answers to “segmentation questions” used to profile participants are also included in the contribution’s total. If a participant gives more than one answer to the same question, each answer is counted as a separate contribution. Verbatim: any response to an open-ended question. Again, if a participant gives more than one response to the same open-ended question, each response is counted as a separate verbatim. Verbatims thus record the freely expressed ideas of the participants. Cluster: a semantic group containing a certain number of verbatims. Each cluster relates to an idea expressed by participants and the range of themes provides an overview of all answers to a given question. There are two types of clusters: macro-clusters, which relate to more general categories (a few dozen per question) and sub-clusters, which break down the ideas into finer detail and are attached to macro-clusters (120–200 sub-clusters per question). Synonym: theme. Interpretive guidelines For each question, participants can give more than one answer. Participants are asked to put their ideas on separate lines if they have several of them to share, to make it easier to separate semantic analysis of the verbatims and thus achieve a certain level of consistency in the analysis. NB: Some verbatims sometimes contain several ideas. In such cases, the first idea is the default selection, or the main idea if this is specified in the text. Since each participant can give several answers, the cluster percentages relate to the weight given to each idea across all the people who answered the question analyzed. Furthermore, the questions are open-ended and have been deliberately formulated very broadly. This therefore produces a very significant diversity of possible responses and themes addressed.Thus, if a macro-cluster is shared by 10% of respondents, its weight is considered to be particularly significant and important. Sub-clusters are even more finely detailed and therefore considered to be significant if attached to over three percent of participants, depending on the question. The scale of the consultation means that very few ideas do not surface at all: rather than noting whether or not they are present in the corpus of responses, it is much more valuable to observe the relative weight of each idea in comparison with others, and note any variations appearing according to participant segment. This summary therefore is well-suited to such an exercise, offering four double-page spreads for each question. The first two pages provide an overview of the results. Next, on the second double-page spread, comes a view by major region (based on the World Bank’s classification). The third double-page spread focuses on two comparative views, highlighting two countries and two elements of comparison, selected according to two criteria: their value in terms of our analysis, and the total number of participants in each category, which must be sufficient for the data to be useable. Finally, the last two pages feature interesting nuggets—unusual, particularly detailed contributions from all over the world. In addition, on various pages you will find elements allowing you to go further or sections highlighting workshops organized all over the world by our Youth Talks ambassadors. How should the results be read? This choice, recommended by the Scientific Committee, is very much open to criticism, like any other classification we may have chosen. Nevertheless, the World Bank classification offers a number of advantages that explain why it was our preferred choice: Firstly, it is widely recognized and used on an international scale in both research and public policy environments. By conforming to this established norm, therefore, our results will be more easily understood and interpreted by a diverse audience, including researchers, decision-makers and our international partners. Secondly, this classification into seven clearly defined regions provides a good balance between accuracy and simplicity. It is more detailed than certain other widely used classifications, such as the United Nations one, which is limited to five regions (Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania) and may therefore conceal important regional differences. At the same time, it is less complicated than various other classification systems that divide the world into dozens of regions and sub-regions, which could make our results less intelligible and more difficult to interpret, when presented in a report such as this, for example. Finally, the World Bank classification is based on criteria related to geography and income, which makes it particularly relevant to the socioeconomic questions explored in the context of Youth Talks. This approach means we can present our results in a more contextualized way, thus revealing potential regional nuances in young people’s perspectivesand priorities. Why base our classification on the one used by the World Bank?