Between words and numbers: the combination of qualitative and quantitative instruments for a good efficacy evaluation

Around 14 million young people aged between 15 and 19 aren’t engaged in education, employment or training (NEET). After Greece, Italy is the second European country with the largest number of NEET (Istat, 2015). The huge consistency of this phenomenon brought many Governments and non-profit associations to enhance and promote several project against social exclusion, in order to try to reduce this youthful pervasive condition. Among these ones, a famous Italian association proposed a project with the aim of providing soft skills to the young NEET, exploitable within the labour market. This project lasted three months and was based on sport and job training (e.g. mok job interviews, CVs editing, etc.). The aim of the present study is the assessment of project’s efficacy. The evaluation was carried out with two different instruments: a) semi-structured interviews developed at the end of the project in order to understand the young people perception about the exploitability of acquired soft skills and the project strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, it was assessed the actual engagement of participants in educational or employment training. b) a self-report questionnaire given at both the beginning and the end of the project, in order to outline the differences between the participants’ level of Quality of Life, Self-efficacy and Locus of Control. The sample consisted in 11 male NEET, aged between 16 and 24. The interviews analysis showed a general satisfaction of the participants, who identified sport as a good way to obtain several soft skills. However the participants have reached different level of social engagement. On the other hand, the questionnaire analysis showed a participants awareness about the lack of auto-efficacy in problem solving. Both questionnaire and interview show strengths and weaknesses, for this reason the combination of qualitative and quantitative instruments seems to be an indispensable requirement for a good efficacy evaluation.