BEST - BSA Study

[Jameson76]

8 minutes ago, ItsBrian said:

“How is the BSA national office involved?
The national office is providing input on the study, but the study is being conducted by external, independent researchers at MSU and AIR.”

From the CSE Letter - Note the term "collaborating".  The BSA (i.e. National Office) will be very involved

The BSA, the Institute for Research on Youth Thriving and Evaluation (RYTE) at Montclair State University, and the American Institutes for Research are collaborating to conduct the study.

[RememberSchiff]

Wasn't this done 3 1/2 years ago?

Tufts (University) study confirms Scouting builds character in 6 areas.  (2015)

https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2015/10/22/tufts-study-confirms-scouting-builds-character-six-critical-areas/

https://sites.tufts.edu/campstudy/

Baylor University  research study 'Eagle Scouts Merit Beyond the Badge"  (2012)

https://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=113239

Edited February 8, 2019 by RememberSchiff

[HashTagScouts]

1 hour ago, Jameson76 said:

From the CSE Letter - Note the term "collaborating".  The BSA (i.e. National Office) will be very involved

The BSA, the Institute for Research on Youth Thriving and Evaluation (RYTE) at Montclair State University, and the American Institutes for Research are collaborating to conduct the study.

Also look at what the "rewards" are for completing the survey- Scout Shop gift cards.  That's your National office funding those...

[shortridge]

6 hours ago, Jameson76 said:

They get cyber chip, comparing the cost of items at three locations, and having to explain utilities to their house. 

Heck, I’m not sure if I can explain how utilities work to my house.

[ItsBrian]

2 hours ago, Jameson76 said:

From the CSE Letter - Note the term "collaborating".  The BSA (i.e. National Office) will be very involved

The BSA, the Institute for Research on Youth Thriving and Evaluation (RYTE) at Montclair State University, and the American Institutes for Research are collaborating to conduct the study.

I just copied and pasted what I said from the FAQ on their website:

[Eagle94-A1]

7 hours ago, ItsBrian said:

From what I’ve briefly read and heard by my SM, this is done mostly without national involved. It’s done by Montclair university and a research firm. 

Please bear with us. We are not disbelieving you. Rather we are disbelieving what national is putting out. Some of us have been involved withe the BSA for a long time in many different capacities. We have seen how National has skewed data in the past to get the results  they wanted. And this has repeatedly happen over the years. EDITED: first case of that happening that I know of is the OPERATION FIRST CLASS report that @Eagledad talks about. As a 15 year old Life Scout, I even commented on how  skewed the report was for aged based patrols. And sometimes BSA doesn't publish results, or even ignores the published results. They never did post the internal results of one series of polls. And another time, they completely ignored the 94% who either disagreed(16%) or strongly disagreed (78%)  with removing tenure requirements for Eagle Palms. So again, we are not disbelieving you, but the BSA.

Anytime someone or a corporation invests time and money into something, they want facts to support them. And it's not only the BSA. Look at Seattle. They hired a college to come up with  how the $15/hour minimum wage they implemented is helping out. When the university showed them the preliminary results, and those results were NOT supporting Seattle's wishes, they fired  the university researchers, and hired another. Here is the kicker, the other university had 1 month to take the data the first university collected and shared with the city and prove the city's position. And the 1 month deadline was to publish the results before the original university published theirs.

Edited February 8, 2019 by Eagle94-A1

[Eagledad]

12 hours ago, ItsBrian said:

I just copied and pasted what I said from the FAQ on their website:

I’m not sure what is confusing about this. If you don’t know how to work on cars, you take it to an expert. National isn’t in the business of doing research, so they go to experts. The question is what do the three organizations expect from the study. Something!

Barry

[Saltface]

On 2/7/2019 at 5:31 PM, RememberSchiff said:

Wasn't this done 3 1/2 years ago?

Tufts (University) study confirms Scouting builds character in 6 areas.  (2015)

https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2015/10/22/tufts-study-confirms-scouting-builds-character-six-critical-areas/

https://sites.tufts.edu/campstudy/

Baylor University  research study 'Eagle Scouts Merit Beyond the Badge"  (2012)

https://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=113239

According to Bryan Wendell:

Quote

This is not a comparison study. It’s not comparing the BSA to another youth-serving organization or after-school activity. (The 2015 Tufts study already did that.).

https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2019/02/13/bsa-best-study/

 

I would like to know what were the other organizations that BSA was compared against. From what I've read, it was just scouts and non-scouts.

[willray]

On 2/7/2019 at 8:32 PM, shortridge said:

Heck, I’m not sure if I can explain how utilities work to my house.

Sorry for the mild thread necromancy, especially by the new guy on the block, but, if you don't know why explaining the utilities to your house should be exciting to scouts, you've fallen for the bland simplification of scouting that the bureaucrats are selling.  (Don't worry, most of the scouts in my troop don't seem to get this either.  I'm working on it...)

Why would someone think that a scout should know about the services that their family consumes from society?  Because a scout is prepared.  What is his (or now her) family's plan for when the power goes out?  Flashlights?  Candles?  What if it goes out for 5 days?  In the winter?   Are they prepared to help others around them, as well as keep their own family safe and well?  The requirement is an invitation to think about how _they_ are going to help prepare their family for a disaster.   It's a civics lesson couched in an invitation to teen-fantasy heroics.  Feed the fantasy.  At the same time, you'll help them create a plan for the more likely minor emergencies that their family will encounter, and that probably better than 9 out of 10 families have not planned for.  Everybody wins, and you turn what looks like a bland and pointless "assignment" into something fun.