ADVENTURE COMPASS

Evaluating our Wild Pathways and why it matters.

It’s important that we can demonstrate to everyone who contributes to our work how, together, we are making a real difference and helping more young people unlock their self-belief.

Our Adventure Compass means we are not just counting the number of young people on our Wild Pathways and the activities they take part in; we’re measuring real, lasting change, so our community can be confident that the outcomes we report are genuine improvements

The Adventure Compass works in a holistic way and looks at 3 critical measures Skills, Curiosity, and Well-being.

These measures are reassessed several times, by each young person, during their time with us.

The Adventure Compass facilitates reflective conversations between young people and our volunteer Experts/Leaders, encouraging young people to think about what they hope to learn from their time with us and to consider any areas of their own skills or personal qualities that they hope to build on.

Learn how we interpret the data

1. The Skills Compass

An adapted version of the respected, evidence-based Outcome Star™ tool – used by thousands of organisations – to measure and support change.

The Skills Compass helps young people set goals and reflect on their progress in acquiring key skills, like ‘making decisions that matter,’ ‘problem solving’ and ‘confidence’.

In 2024…

81% of young people reported an increase in their ability to make decisions that matter.

2. The Curiosity Compass

This compass assesses how well we foster curiosity and the appetite for learning new things. It encourages young people think about their relationship with the world around them and their place in it.

It helps young people think about how they learn, how they share their learning with others, and how that learning may support decisions they go on to make after they complete their programme with us.

In 2024…

88% of young people agreed/strongly agreed that they feel able to share their knowledge of the natural world with others.

3. The Well-being Compass

The Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale is an academically validated, research based tool that measures mental well-being in a simple, structured way. It consists of seven positively worded statements that reflect key aspects of mental well-being.

Young people use the Wellbeing Compass to rate how often they have experienced each of the seven statements during their time with us. It helps young people gain a clearer understanding of their own well-being and how to manage it, while also allowing us to see the positive impacts we are having.

In 2024…

Post-expedition young people scored above the cut off for ‘high well-being’ – putting them inside the top 15% for mental well-being in the UK population.

Our Adventure Compass:

→ Puts young people at the centre of their own progress.

→ Supports meaningful conversations between volunteer expedition Leaders & young people.

→ Captures change over time in a structured, evidence-based way.

→ Generates reliable data giving us research-backed insights in mental well-being and personal development.

→ Measures real change that helps us understand what’s working well and where we can make changes for the better.

→ Keeps us accountable to our young people, our volunteers, and our community.

Understanding the change behind the numbers

The Adventure Compass data is collected from young people at the end of each adventure/expedition for evaluation. We measure change using the ‘change in score’ criteria.

Change in Score	Level of Change	Interpretation
+2.5 or more	Outstanding	They’ve made strong progress towards managing independently
+1.5 – 2	Significant	They’re building skills, confidence and starting to take control
+0.5 – 1	Moderate but meaningful change	They’ve taken a first step – e.g. from accepting help to trying things out
0	No change	They may be stable or still facing barriers
Negative	Setback	May indicate new challenges or a need to adjust support

For example:

A young person’s score in “Problem Solving” went from 2 to 4, that’s a +2-point change, which could be described as:

This young person saw an ‘significant’ change in their problem-solving skills, meaning they’ve built skills, confidence and are starting to take control.

If the young person did not move from 2, this is described as ‘no change’ and could be expressed as:

The young person saw ‘no change’ in their problem-solving skills indicating that this is a skill they are stable in or are still facing barriers to develop further.

The Adventure Compass produces helpful statistics for groups of young people, meaning we can report on what percentage of young people have scored what ‘level of change’ in each measure.

For example, if 45 out of 60 young people scored a change of +2.5 in ‘Confidence’, this could be interpreted as:

75% of young people reported a ‘outstanding’ change in their confidence, meaning they’ve made strong progress.

Additional insight from the Well-being Compass:

The Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale is used throughout the UK, which means we can compare young people’s well-being against the well-being of the UK population using these scores.

27.5+ = High well-being (15% of UK population)
23.5 = Mean well-being (UK population)
19.5 = Low well-being (15% of UK population)

Behind all these numbers are of course the people and their stories. Stories from those who joined us recently to those who spent time with us 20+ years ago. The impact of their experiences with us still resonates with them today.

You can read a few stories here

want to learn more?

Read our latest Annual Report