check if registered sidebar is active & has widget content

I’d like to check if a registered sidebar has widget content – but can’t seem to find a WP function for this – is_active_widget checks if it has content, but not if it exists or not.

function ql_widget( $widget, $widget_name, $element = 'sider' ){

    if ( $widget ) { // widget name passed ##

        // check if widget is active - return html & widget content if true ##
        if ( is_active_sidebar( $widget ) ) { 

        echo '
        <div class="'.$element.'">';

            dynamic_sidebar( $widget );

         echo '</div>';

        } else {

            // issue error if requested widget does not exist or is empty ##
            if ( ql_user_is_administator() ) { // user is admin ##

                if ( dynamic_sidebar( $widget ) ) { // empty ##

                    $message = 'empty';

                } else { // widget ID or name wrong ##

                    $message = 'error';

                }

?>
                <div class="error"><strong>Widget <?php echo $message; ?>:</strong> 
                <?php echo $widget_name ? $widget_name : $widget ; ?></div>
<?php 


            }
        }
    }
}

I call this on the page using:

// load widget ##
// widget_id, widget name, class of containing element ##
ql_widget( 'sidebar-general', 'Standard Sidebar', 'sider' );

The sidebars are registered correctly with register_sidebar() and have an unique ID assigned to each.

currently this function returns the error to the admin if the widget is missing or empty – I’d like to be able to tailor the error to indicate if it’s missing or empty

Thanks!

UPDATE
here’s the working function:
link to pastebin