National Citizen Service 2014 Evaluation

Ipsos was commissioned by the Cabinet Office to evaluate the spring, summer and autumn programmes of National Citizen Service (NCS) 2014. NCS is a Government-backed initiative that brings together young people aged 15 to 17 from different backgrounds to help them develop greater confidence, self-awareness and responsibility, with a view to creating a more cohesive, responsible and engaged society. It is managed by the NCS Trust, an independent not for profit organisation.

NCS 2014 spring, summer and autumn programmes involved over 57,000 young people taking part in a range of team activities, as well as a social action project in their local community. This report covers the findings from measuring impacts and value for money of NCS 2014. Impacts were measured across four outcome areas: social mixing; transition to adulthood; teamwork, communication and leadership; and community involvement.

All programmes were found to have statistically significant positive impacts in all four outcome areas, and summer standard 2014, was estimated to return to society between £1.12 and £3.98 of benefits per £1 spent on the programme.

• Download the technical report (PDF)

Technical Details

The evaluation comprised four components:

• A self-completion paper and online surveys of NCS participants and control groups, conducted before the summer and autumn programmes began, around three months after their completion, and again a year later (In spring, 3,721 NCS participants and 1,631 control group members completed baseline surveys. Of these, 638 and 595 respectively completed follow-up surveys. In summer, 35,926 NCS participants of standard programmes and 2,415 NCS participants of test programmes completed the baseline survey. Of these, 2,266 and 439 completed follow-up surveys respectively. In addition, 6,087 members of the control group in summer completed baseline surveys and 1,368 completed follow-up surveys. In autumn, 8,828 NCS participants and 2,121 control group members completed baseline surveys. Of these, 1,363 and 736 respectively completed follow-up surveys).
• An economic analysis of the data from the participant surveys using the HM Treasury Green Book methodology