Research for All Research for All https://doi.org/10.14324/RFA.06.1.11 Article The challenges of assessing the impact of a comedy programme aimed at improving the mental well-being of young people Marie Caslin 1, * and Charlene Davies 2 1 Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University, UK 2 The Comedy Trust, Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre, UK; charlene@thecomedytrust.com *Corresponding author: caslinm@hope.ac.uk Submission date: 8 March 2021; Acceptance date: 21 March 2022; Publication date: 3 May 2022 How to cite Caslin, M. and Davies, C. (2022) ‘The challenges of assessing the impact of a comedy programme aimed at improving the mental well-being of young people’. Research for All, 6 (1), 11. DOI: https://doi. org/10.14324/RFA.06.1.11. Peer review This article has been peer-reviewed through the journal’s standard double-anonymous peer review, where both the reviewers and authors are anonymised during review. Copyright 2022, Marie Caslin and Charlene Davies. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited • DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/RFA.06.1.11. Open access Research for All is a peer-reviewed open-access journal. Abstract Assessing the impact of community-based programmes presents many challenges. One diffculty encountered is how to develop appropriate research methods to capture the impact of the work while also meeting the demands of external funders. For almost two decades, the charity organisation The Comedy Trust (TCT) have attempted to navigate these challenges. In 2018, TCT had the opportunity to work with a university-based researcher to develop their approaches to research. We aimed to explore what happens when you move away from quantifable predetermined methods to take a more participatory approach to work alongside the participants of the programme. We decided to focus on their Feeling Funny Youth programme, which is aimed at young people to support their mental health and well-being. This paper is a case study of how the programme worked with a group of young people based within a youth organisation. In this paper, we offer a comparison of the standardised tool adopted by TCT with the development of more creative and participatory methods developed in collaboration with young people who participated in the programme. We offer an insight into what