The Older Girl Program: Survey Results

 After publishing my posts regarding surveys I did about the Daisy and Brownie programs, some people asked "What about the older girls?" thinking that as often happens in Girl Scouts, the older girls were left out.  Well, it took a while but I finally did an older girl survey and here are the results.

Who Responded? 

Of the 240 responses I got, 13 were from current Girl Scouts.  207 were from current leaders of older girls. 60 were from adults who were Girl Scouts past Juniors.  114 were parents of current or former older Girl Scouts.  

About 68% of people picked one of my reasons why they or their girls are still in Girl Scouts.  The others 32% had a variety of answers.  The choices I gave were:

• Its what they do with that group of friends (13.9%)
• The outdoor activities (19%)
• To work on the Gold for college/career prep (8.7%)
• It's fun (32%)
• Travel (3.9%)

What Are Troops Like?

I received 229 responses when I asked what type of troop current older girls and leaders were involved with.  44.1% said a single-level Cadette, Senior or Ambassador troop.  23.1%  were in multi-level troops that were older girls only, and 26.2% were in multi-level troops with younger girls.  2.2% were Juliettes and 4.4% belonged to Mariner or Trailblazer troops.  

28.6% of the 234 who responded said their troop started together in Daisies or Brownies and had taken few if any girls since then. 35.5% started in Daisies or Brownies and had taken in a lot of girls since then. 6% started as Juniors or older.  27.4% characterized their troop as a permanent troop that had girls joining and leaving all the time. 

The last year plus has been wonky because of Covid, but I listed several activities and asked if their troops had done them in the last year.  29.8% had done an online STEM program, 48.8% participated in some other type of online award earning program, 87.8% did some sort of outdoor activity besides a meeting and 52.2% did some sort of overnight.  

About 1/6 of the people who responded to my question about what they do at meetings wrote in an answer.  Many boiled down to "a lot of different things".  The responses I gave got these these votes:

• We spend a lot of time socializing but work on a few badge requirements (14.8%)
• We pick activities we want to do and spend our meeting either doing them or preparing to do them.  We are over badges and patches (20.8%)
• We are always working toward something we can put on our vest, be it a badge, Journey, pin, higher award or fun patch (31.8%)

I asked people to rank the four pillars GSUSA is using now to describe its program by the amount of time their troop spends on them, with the exception of time spent selling cookies.  If you give each #1 vote four points, each #2, three etc. , STEM got 328 points, entrepreneurship got 430 points, Outdoors got 764 and Lifeskills, 754.  The one that most people marked #1 was outdoors and the one fewest did was entrepreneurship, but STEM was close.  116 marked outdoors first, 107 life skills, 27 STEM and 13 spent most of their time on entrepreneurship.  

Finally, I asked whether troops did these things (yes/no).  

• Meet at least twice a month (202/35)
• Camp at least once a year (191/44)
• Do outdoor things outside of camping (193/45)
• Travel out of town at least once a year (137/98)
• Do cookie booths (217/20)
• Help with younger girls (186/49)
• Do things with other older girl troops (98/136)
• Take a large trip every few years (94/137)

Money

Many of the things older girls want to do have substantial price tags attached.  I asked how troops were financed.  66.9% said that product sales pay most of the troop costs.  16.7% aid they sold Girl Scout products but did other money earning as well. 16.3% said that that dues and/or payments by parents and/or girls paid much of the cost.

When it came to cookie money, 84.7% said the money went into one pot and that they budgeted/spent as a troop.  11.9% said that most went into paper accounts for the girls so that those who sold more cookies got more money to spend.  3.4% said that they required a certain level of participation in order to share in cookie profits.  

I also asked about cookie awards and got these responses:'

• We earn at least one of the badges relating to business skills and cookie sales per year (49.6%)
• We talk a lot about business skills and cookie sales but don't necessarily earn badges (16.2%)
• Other than signing up for booths, we don't talk about cookies at meetings---been there, done that. (34.2%0

 Badges

I started analyzing the badge responses and my post got way too long so stay tuned for posts about the badges.

My Comments

There are two things about surveys that I hate:  First when I answer one truthfully but at the end do not believe that the answers accurately represented my thoughts about whatever.  In other words because of the way the questions were worded I had to give a favorable opinion of something about which I did not have a favorable opinion or an unfavorable opinion when mine really as favorable.  Secondly, when the survey is too long.  I tried to avoid both pitfalls but I know it is hard, so I'd like to thank those of  you who participated and I'd like to invite  you to comment below and express any opinion you do not believe was properly expressed in your survey results, even if your answers were true.

While I have two daughters, one who was in Girl Scouts all through high school and one who quit after eighth grade, I've never led older girls (and God bless our parish's older girl leaders).  

I have no idea how typical the people who responded are compared to other older girl leaders, but I was surprised at how many people were earning the cookie badges.  Despite GSUSA's STEM push, I wasn't surprised that the STEM and entrepreneur pillars received a lot less attention from troops than outdoors and life skills.   

When taken as a whole, are these survey results similar to your experience with Girl Scouts?