Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part J (2025)

This research seeks to review the effects of the effectiveness of university scouting activities on building leadership and decision-making skills among first year students in college of physical Education and Sports Sciences in the University of Baghdad. This research was done due to the growing necessity to develop the leadership qualities of students and their decision-making skills that allow them to make proper choices in different academic and life circumstances. The research design taken by the researchers was the experimental one by which a selective sample of first-year students was chosen and split into two groups:

• The experimental group - was exposed to a scouting program that was developed by the researchers, and it consisted of interactive activities.
• Control group - participated in the conventional activities that were organized by the college and the course instructor.

Two instruments were used in the study.

1. An Avolio and Bass Questionnaire Leadership Skills Questionnaire (1994). It is a questionnaire that aims at quantifying leadership qualities and behaviors and has been extensively applied in literature on leadership styles and leadership effectiveness with prior studies indicating that it has satisfactory reliability and validity indices when administered in the same context.
2. A Decision-Making Skills Test, which would evaluate the skills of the student in terms of analyzing the situation and choosing the relevant alternatives.

The validity and reliability of the instruments were confirmed by using Cronbach alpha which is a measure of internal consistency that shows how the items of a scale have a consistent measurement of the same construct. It was observed that the instruments had good reliability. The scouting program contained the list of the field and interactive tasks like teamwork, problem solving issues, change of leadership and decision-making situations in the form of scenarios. It was found that statistically significant differences existed between the mean scores between the two groups in favor of the experimental group which validates that university scouting activities are effective when it comes to development of leadership and decision-making skills among students in the first year.