6 Country Reports on Youth Work - Jugendpolitik in Europa

Comments:
In Italy it was again not possible to survey youth work structures at local level. Information
about providers, youth workers and youth work offered by associations is not available.
Useful information was provided only by Eurodesk, but it does highlight the fact that the main
categories of youth work are indeed available at local level.
10.7 The Netherlands
Data base:
An aim of the Dutch study was to gain an impression of the within-country differences in the
sector of youth work. Therefore, the municipalities were chosen according to the expected
differences. Previous studies reported differences to occur between municipalities depending
on the number of inhabitants, between cities depending on the share of migrants, and
between villages depending on religious affiliation.
In a first step, the criteria of the number of inhabitants and of the religious affiliation were
combined in order to identify a heterogeneious set of municipalities. The resulting set of
municipalities respectively municipal districts and their characteristics is given in the
followingTable:
Table 40: Background informations on the Dutch municipalities
92
Amsterdam
- Bos en
Lommer
Den Bosch
- Maaspoort
Zeewolde Renswoude
Religious background Neutral Catholic Neutral Protestant
Number of inhabitants
Percentage of persons
aged 13-30
~ 30,500
(Amsterdam
~ 743 000)
Not known
(Amsterdam
~ 25%)
~ 18,000
(Den Bosch
~ 134 000)
~ 21%
(Den Bosch
~ 23%)
~ 20,000 ~ 4,500
~ 21% ~ 25%
Percentage of migrants ~ 75% ~ 15% ~ 11% ~ 4%
Data within the four selected municipalities or municipal districts was collected from the
providers of activities of youth work. These providers were identified by examining the
municipalities’ homepages for young people. Where such a homepage was not available, the
gemeentegids (guide to the municipality) was scanned for activities that (I) took place within
the municipality and (II) were targeted at young people. The identified providers of youth
work activities were sent a covering letter explaining the research project and a questionnaire
based on the common list of indicators of the international research project. As this led to a
low response rate (n=1 after two weeks), providers were then called and interviewed via
telephone, or, where necessary, face to face. The change in approach led to a response rate
of about 75%. It tuned out that lack of response was due to a different reason for each type
of provider. The for-profits did not see themselves as providers of youth work activities and