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4.2 Research question 2: What soft-skills and competences are developed
and at what level through non-formal education in youth
organisations?
There is limited literature on the impact of participation in youth
organisations on soft skills development. It is acknowledged in many
of the available studies that ‘hard evidence’ regarding the claims
made in those studies that refer to involvement in youth
organisations and employability between participation in youth
organisations and skills development is lacking (Feldberg 2011 107 ;
see also Henderson et al. 2005 108 ). This study, therefore, placed an
important emphasis on the collection of primary data to answer this
question.
The chapter is organised as follows: first, it presents data on the level
of skills development in youth organisations. Second, it explores a
range of individual and organisational factors (degree of involvement
in youth organisations, involvement with youth organisations outside
the home country, existence of an educational plan and method of
assessment for the skills developed in the youth organisation) that
may affect such degree of development. Third, it examines the
usefulness of the skills developed in youth organisations for young
people’s current occupation.
4.2.1 Soft skills and competences developed by young people in youth
organisations
The soft skills and competences developed by young people in youth
organisations, as reported by young people themselves, are
outlined in Table 4.3 below. This table and subsequent tables on skills
development show the degree to which skills and attitudes have been
gained or improved by young people through involvement in youth
organisations, on a scale from 0= no improvement to 5= high
improvement.
Table 4.3 shows data broken down by level of education of
respondents. We see that, on the whole, young people at the higher
levels of qualification report greater skills development during their
involvement with youth organisations. The improvements reported at
lower levels of formal educational attainment, however, are still
significant – with most improvement levels above 3.0.
The high degree of development of team-working skills, selfconfidence,
intercultural skills, adaptability/ flexibility and
107 Feldberg, H. R. (2011) ‘S’more than just fun and games: teachers’ perceptions on the educational value of camp
programmes for school groups’ MA Thesis, University of Waterloo, Canada.
108 Henderson, K. A., Powell, G. M., & Scanlin, M. M. (2005) ‘Observing outcomes in youth development: An analysis
of mixed methods’ Journal of Parks & Recreation Administration, 23(4), 58-77.
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