The YouthPower Action Youth Soft Skills Assessment is a measurement tool for youth soft skills, developed and validated for administration with youth in lower resource environments. The target group for the measurement tool is youth aged 15-19 years, both in and out-of-school, who are typically the beneficiaries of USAID-sponsored youth programs. The design and testing initially included two instruments: a youth self-assessment, as well as a third-party assessment, intended for use with youth program mentors or facilitators. This report describes the process of instrument development, as well as presents the results of the testing and validation at two sites.

The Youth Soft Skills Assessment is grounded in an extensive review of literature and draws from a repository of close to 300 instruments intended to measure cross-sectoral skills. This instrument seeks to measure key skills predictive of positive youth outcomes: workforce success, violence prevention, and reproductive health, as well as be: a) targeted to youth ages 15-19; b) low cost and easy to administer, c) sensitive to change over time, and d) consistent across cultural contexts. The instrument development consisted of the following stages:

1. Initial instrument design, based on a repository of existing tools and adaptation;
2. Field testing in Uganda and Guatemala, consisting of qualitative cognitive interviews and field
administration of the tool in both countries at two points in time;
3. Revisions to item content and wording, as well as response options; exclusion of poorly
performing items;
4. Validation analysis, including scale structure (exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis,
reliability analysis, predictive validity, analysis of change over time, and cross-cultural
comparability).