Girlguiding and wellbeing

Research shows that girls’ confidence drops during adolescence, but Girlguiding helps mitigate this, and can raise girls’ confidence higher than boys’

Girlguiding, the UK’s largest youth organisation dedicated to girls, has used Understanding Society and its own survey data to show that:

There’s no statistically significant difference in girls’ and boys’ confidence between the ages of 10 and 11
from 12 to 15, there is a noticeable and often increasing gap between boys’ and girls’ confidence
girls who have experienced Girlguiding have higher levels of confidence than girls who have not
Girlguiding raises its members’ confidence of beyond the UK youth average.

The work formed part of the organisation’s 2023 impact report, and has been summarized in a new ‘explainer’ from Understanding Society.

Read the new ‘explainer’: Does guiding boost girls’ wellbeing?

The research looked at four measures of different aspects of confidence:

‘I get nervous and lose confidence in new situations’ – which assesses confidence and nervousness
‘I can usually solve my own problems’ – measuring self-efficacy (our belief in our ability to achieve tasks we set ourselves)
‘I am as able as most people’ – also measuring self-efficacy
‘I feel I have a number of good qualities’ – to measure self-worth

When the researchers compared their own Girlguiding data with Understanding Society figures, they found that those in guiding experience less significant drops in confidence compared to UK girls as a whole – and their confidence can even exceed the levels reported by UK boys. Compared to UK boys and girls combined, being in Girlguiding is associated with being 3-7% more likely to report high self-efficacy and 3% more likely to report high self-worth.

The research represents the start of a long-term project by Girlguiding, the Impact and Experience Study, which aims to generate evidence of their impact on girls’ and volunteers’ lives.

Read Girlguiding’s 2023 impact report