Please note, that the Scout Experience Survey is run by UKHQ, not BSO.
The Scouts want to hear from you in the 2023 Scout Experience Survey. There are prizes up for grabs, too.
We run our Scout Experience Survey each year to find out what you think about Scouts. It helps us find out what you love and what you'd like to change, as well as understanding the impact Scouts has on young people and communities.
Why the survey is important
The Scout Experience Survey helps us understand what’s working well in Scouts, and what we need to improve. This helps us make better decisions about how to spend time and money more effectively to make Scouts better for everyone.
We also use the Scout Experience Survey results to show the positive impact Scouts has on young people and communities. By highlighting these positives, we can make stronger cases for fundraising and have more influence on things like government and the youth sector. This allows us to grow the movement, so we can give more young people skills for life.
But to make this all happen, we need your help. Over the past few years there’ve been less people taking part in the survey. In 2019, 12% of volunteers took part, which fell to only 6% last year. In 2022, only 0.8% of eligible young people took part. This means we might not be getting a true picture of how big our impact is on young people's lives.
What we've learned so far
Over the years, the survey has uncovered some really valuable insights which we’ve used to inform our work. Some of the key results from last year told us:
- Young people are reporting higher levels of happiness, life satisfaction and resilience than in 2021. They're also going out on more nights away (like camps and expeditions), spending less time meeting online, and volunteering more in their community than in 2021. This is great evidence that Scouts is bouncing back to normal after the COVID-19 pandemic, with more young people getting the most they can out of Scouts again.
- Volunteers have felt less satisfied with Scouts. We’ve then explored what volunteers need to make their Scouts experience easier and started our volunteer experience transformation programme to build tools and resources to make volunteering easier for everyone.
- Volunteers told us that the annual cost of Scouts is £232. This has decreased by £28 since 2018, but increased by £23 since 2021. We want to make sure Scouts is still affordable for all, and in light of the Cost of Living Crisis, we’ve created new support and guidance for volunteers to try and make Scouts cheaper for volunteers and families. We’ve also created a Cost of Living Support Fund, which provided a grant to 1,050 young people across the UK.
These insights are incredibly useful, and we'd be super grateful to hear your thoughts in this year's survey to help us shape our work for the next year.
Download the 2022 Scout Experience Survey results (pdf)
How you can get involved
To make all of this happen, we need your help. We’d be incredibly grateful if you could fill in this years’ survey and give us your feedback about Scouts.
Anyone in Scouts aged 13 or older can take part, including young people, parents/carers, and adult volunteers. If you have regular contact with young people or their parents/carers, please share the survey with them so we can learn how Scouts impacts them, too.
The survey is open until 16 June 2023, so make sure you take part before then.
Prizes
As a thank you for your time, everyone who takes part in the survey will be in with a chance to win a prize. Here’s what you could win:
- 10 x £50 Amazon vouchers for young people (including Young Leaders) and Network Members (prize draw)
- 10 x £50 Amazon vouchers for parents/carers (prize draw)
- 10 x £50 Amazon vouchers for adult volunteers (prize draw)
- Plus, there's a 20% discount code for Scout Store for everyone who takes part.
Remember to complete your survey before 16 June 2023 to be included in the prize draw.
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