Survey Results: What I Ordered and What I Got

This post is to report the results of a survey I did of members of Facebook Girl Scout Leader groups.  My questions were designed to elicit opinions about the Girl Scout program as GSUSA has designed it and promulgates it at this time.  

Who Responded

To determine how much weight to give to the results of any survey it is useful to know who is responding.  80% of those who responded to my survey were troop leaders, 18% were co-leaders, 26% were other Girl Scout volunteers. 2% were council staff and 52.2% were parents of a Girl Scout.  222 people responded to this question.

76% of those who answered had been involved in Girl Scouting as an adult for more than five years.  11% had been involved for 3-5 years, and 12% for 1-3 years. Only 1% had been involved as an adult Girl Scout for less than a year.  

50% had been Girl Scouts as girls for more than 4 years, 18% were in Girl Scouts for 3-4 years, 12% were Girl Scouts for 1-2 years and 20% were not in Girl Scouts as children.  50.5% were not Cadettes, Seniors or Ambassadors as girls; 49.5% were.  22.3% earned the highest award (Gold, First Class, Curved Bar etc.) as girls.  

In short, when compared to the whole universe of Girl Scout leaders, this group has been part of Girl Scouts longer than most people have, both as girls and as adults.  

The longevity of the respondents also shows up in what they have done as leaders. 77% have led Daisies, 90% have led Brownies, 86% have led Juniors, 71% have led Cadettes, 39% have led Seniors and 25% have led Ambassadors.  63% have led girls who earned the Bronze or Silver Awards. 17% said they have led girls who earned Gold before Journeys or some other highest award. 30% have led girls who have earned Gold as it is currently structured. 

Of the people who responded, 128 had daughters who earned the Bronze Award, as compared to 83 who did not.  68 people had daughters who earned the Silver Award, 122 did not.  The Gold Award was earned by 29 people's daughters, and not by 142.  

Why Did You Sign Your Daughter Up for Girl Scouts

You've probably seen the social media meme "What I Ordered, What I Got" where an influencer shows a screenshot of what s/he ordered and then a photo of what showed up at the door.  If I order a maxi skirt, it doesn't matter how beautiful it is, if it only comes to my knees I'm going to be unhappy.  People I hear of who are unhappy with Girl Scouts are unhappy because they thought there were "buying" one thing, and ended up with something else.

There are probably as many reasons for signing your daughter up for Girl Scouts as there are people, but I picked some I thought were common and made them a pick list.  5.5% of those who responded said they did not have a daughter.  Props to you for what you do for other people's daughters!  6.6% said the paper came home from school and it looked like fun.  68% said they knew the program and wanted their daughter to be a part of it.  10% joined because a friend did, and 18% said their daughter wanted to join. 7% ran into a recruiting table and 37% said they wanted their daughter to learn to make positive change in the world.  

Often people have one idea of what they are getting when they sign up for something and they learn that it is really something else, whether by design or flaw.  I listed a bunch of things that people might have thought they were getting when they signed up for Girl Scouts and asked if they definitely thought they were getting that, somewhat thought they were getting that or did no think they were getting it.  I then asked the same questions about what they got and what they thought it was important for Girl Scouts to provide.  I have placed the answers on the following table.  The first number in each column is the number of people who said "definitely", the number in the middle is the number who said "somewhat" and the last number is how many said "not at all" 

Item	Before signing up D/S/N	Has Provided D/S/N	Is Important D/S/N
A glorified playgroup	0 20 139	4 52 103	4 29 129
A somewhat fun extension of school	10 64 86	23 82 53	12 73 77
Camping	124 46 3	124 44 7	144 30 0
Cookie Selling	139 33 0	164 11 0	87 77 7
STEM Activities	55 75 35	112 53 8	83 83 9
Crafts	114 58 0	120 52 0	77 86 9
Moral/Religious Activity	10 58 93	19 60 85	22 60 85
Leadership Development	121 43 7	123 44 8	158 17 0
The same thing I did as a Girl Scout	75 53 37	42 74 49	42 65 55
A group to participate in local day trips/activities	109 52 6	131 38 5	123 51 0
Education in Life Skills like Cooking, Sewing, Car Repair, Housekeeping, Personal Hygiene	124 41 6	101 60 11	155 22 0
Education in Business/Financial Skills	70 77 22	94 70 9	122 52 0
A Close Group of Friends	117 49 4	118 50 7	130 44 3
Service Projects	123 42 7	124 49 0	156 20 0
Activism	57 69 41	107 57 8	148 23 4

My Comments

If there is one thing that has disappointed me about the responses to this survey is that they have overwhelmingly come from long-time leaders with deep ties to Girl Scouts.  Yes, I'm one of them, but we aren't normal.  We are the ones who, at least in my service unit, get things done, but we aren't the majority of leaders.  We are the ones who make it work rather than who quit in disgust when it doesn't.  I'm going to have to sit down and disaggregate the responses of our three years and under leaders and see if their thoughts are different than those held by us old-timers.  

Of course the fact that those who responded were, for the most part, leaders means that most of us managed to get what we wanted out of Girl Scouting for our daughters.  Other troops might not _____ but if we wanted our daughters to _____ in Girl Scouts it probably happened.  I would love to get the questions described on the table to a random group of Girl Scout parents.  

What do you think?  If you had to guess how a random group of Girl Scout parents would respond to these questions, do you think the responses would be similar to the responses I got, or different? 

Other Posts:

I have or will be generating several posts from these survey results.  As I write them they will be linked below.  If you are a relatively new reader of my blog, this isn't the first survey I've done.  You can read about the results of other surveys by click the Survey results tag under the post.  

Girl Scout Leaders Talk About Badges:  In response to a "talk about whatever you want" question, these people talked about badges.  These people talked about Take Action Projects.