The Impact of Youth Engagement on Life Satisfaction
Charlotte Goddard
Tuesday, April 27, 2021
Young people’s mental health is getting worse with those in disadvantaged communities facing particular challenges, especially following the Covid-19 pandemic.
- The Impact of Youth Engagement on Life Satisfaction
- Published by European Sociological Review, February 2021
SUMMARY
James Laurence from the University of Manchester’s Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research wanted to find out whether involvement in youth engagement activities could improve young people’s wellbeing through experiences which encourage co-operation, empowerment and positive relationships. Laurence set out to investigate whether participation had a positive effect on disadvantaged young people in particular, or whether it only boosted the wellbeing of more advantaged young people, widening the wellbeing gap.
The study focused on participation in the National Citizen Service (NCS), a three- to four-week scheme where young people aged 16 and 17 spend time living away from home, taking part in outdoor activities such as raft-building, learning new life skills, and getting involved in projects to help their communities.
A questionnaire was sent to 3,985 young people before and three to four months after taking part in NCS. Meanwhile, a control group was established consisting of young people who had expressed an interest in the scheme but had not taken part. Respondents were asked to rate their overall satisfaction with life on a scale of 0 to 10 where 0 was “not at all satisfied” and 10 was “completely satisfied”.
The survey also collected information on young people’s previous levels of formal volunteering and informal help they gave family and friends and on the social and psychological resources available to them, such as the number of people they would be happy to ask for help. Data on disadvantage was extrapolated from participants’ postcodes.
The research found young people who took part in NCS showed a significant improvement in life satisfaction – an increase of 0.17 points compared with the control group, who saw a 0.21 point decrease in their satisfaction. Previous research has found life satisfaction to dip during adolescence. This means young people who took part in NCS effectively saw their life satisfaction rise by nearly 0.4 points.
When surveyed before starting NCS, young people from more disadvantaged areas reported an average life satisfaction score of 6.39 points compared with more advantaged peers who reported 7.32 points. Young people from the most disadvantaged areas who participated in NCS saw an average increase of 1.31 points on the 10-point life satisfaction scale. Those from the least disadvantaged areas saw a much smaller increase of 0.12 points.
Laurence wanted to find out what was causing this rise in life satisfaction. He found that after participating in NCS young people reported fewer negative interactions in their lives and increases in positive interactions. They reported increases in the number of people they could call on for help and amount of informal volunteering they did as well as an improved perception of their neighbourhood and their place in it. They felt more control over their lives and more confidence in their own social skills.
Young people’s increased confidence in their own social skills had the greatest impact on overall life satisfaction, accounting for 32 per cent of the impact of participation in NCS. Increased confidence in having a support network they could turn to accounted for 15 per cent of the impact while an increase in young people’s perception that they had control over their lives accounted for 13 per cent.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
The study suggests the life experiences of young people from disadvantaged communities can heighten a sense of powerlessness and diminish their self-worth. Participation in programmes such as NCS provide experiences outside their everyday environments which give them a new way to judge themselves and their abilities. Laurence suggests youth engagement schemes like NCS might be a key tool to help repair the damage done to young people’s wellbeing by the pandemic.
FURTHER READING
- National Citizen Service 2018 Evaluation: Main Report, Bethany Dokal and others, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, July 2020
- Youth Engagement, Positive Inter-ethnic Contact, and ‘Associational Bridges’: A Quasi-Experimental Investigation of a UK National Youth Engagement Scheme, James Laurence, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, June 2019
- Extracurricular Activities, Positive Youth Development, and the Role of Meaningfulness of Engagement, Matthew Bundick, The Journal of Positive Psychology, February 2011