The impact of Scouts on young people

We conduct the Scout Experience Survey annually to understand our members’ attitudes and experiences. We ask young people aged 13–17 questions about our Theory of Change outcomes: Adventure, Skills for life, Wellbeing, Leadership, Citizenship, and Connectedness. By doing so, we can find out if and how the impact of Scouts is changing throughout our Skills for Life strategy.

We’ve compared the Theory of Change results for 2023 with 2019, which marks the start of our Skills for Life strategy. Since 2019, there’ve been significant improvements* across seven outcomes:

*Statistical comparisons between 2019 and 2023 results are measured by a Mann-Whitney U test. Only significant differences where there was a change of at least +4% or –4% and p < .05 are reported.

Wellbeing

Happiness (+5%)
Life satisfaction (+5%)
Sense that life is worthwhile (+5%)

Citizenship

Sense of local (+5%), national (+6%) and international citizenship (+7%)
Contribute to the community (+6%)
Volunteering in the community (+22%)

Connectedness

Respect and trust for others (+11%)

However, five outcomes have slightly declined since 2019:

Skills for life

Independence (-4%)

Wellbeing

Perseverance and grit (-9%)
Self-confidence (-4%)
Anxiety (+22%)

Connectedness

Respect and trust for people of different races, cultures, and religions (-5%)

In 2021, following the COVID–19 pandemic, we saw declines across a number of outcomes. A few of these outcomes returned to the pre-pandemic (2019) results in 2022, but many of them were still significantly lower than 2019.

In 2023, four outcomes returned to the pre-pandemic results (meaning they’re no longer significantly different to 2019):

Courage to take risks and tackle challenges
Problem solving
Team working
Caring for others

We’re committed to improving the experience of young people in Scouts. We use the insights from this survey and other feedback from young people and volunteers to feed into the programme activities we’ll develop in the year ahead.

To give young people more opportunities to tackle challenges, solve problems and work together outdoors, we’ve launched programme resources for our Outdoor in 24 initiative, which encourages Scout Sections, from Squirrels to Network, to get outside in 2024. Whether it’s just for one meeting, a Night Away event, or taking on the Outdoor in 24 challenge, we’re hoping to get young people trying new things outdoors this year.

Conscious of the decreases in connectedness and caring for others, as well as the increase in anxiety, we’ll develop programme resources on healthy relationships, mental health, and wellbeing. As part of building connections to our international Scout family, we’ll continue building resources to celebrate cultures experiencing conflict. We’re also building a programme youth team to bring young people’s voices and views directly into our programme, helping it become more youth shaped.

Over the coming year, we’re exploring new ways to listen to our young people and measure how Scouts has impacted them. This includes: