May 2017 — As the evidence base on the importance of soft skills for fostering positive youth outcomes has grown, international youth development programs have increasingly focused on interventions that develop these skills. This growth in soft skills interventions has resulted in an urgent need for soft skill measures that can be used in program implementation and evaluation. The U.S. Agency for International Development’s YouthPower Action project has completed a review of measurement tools and a descriptive inventory for international youth development programs that seek to assess participants’ soft skills. This report describes general findings about the tools that were reviewed, as well as specific findings about tools that measure a select set of soft skills. The document also makes recommendations for improving those resources.
