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Soft benefits for hard nuts: the impact of community‐building interventions on ‘anti‐social youth’

This article discusses, from the point of view of the evaluator, methodological issues relating to a two year evaluation of an intervention scheme, which provided deprived communities with weekly football training sessions run by professional football coaches. Rather than reporting on the findings of the intervention scheme itself, the article focuses on the difficulties in identifying quantifiable hard measures of impact for interventions such as these, owing to: the complex nature of the communities served; the limitations of attainable, short term outcomes; and the difficulties in identifying measurable outcomes. The paper also critically explores the understandings of ‘anti-social behaviour’ and interrogates the idea that this is a useful or measurable concept, including analysis of statistical data on anti-social behaviour.