Not to take away from scouts, but I feel like this study could apply to any group that a child decides to stick with and learn from. Sports teach resilience and the like, as well does joining a music group. My club soccer team during high school was unbeaten for most seasons and ended up state champions, but most of us didn't hangout afterwards or even like each other.
Scout specifically get in to nature, and there are several articles/studies claiming there are positive mental health effects of being in nature, so that (or the the combination of that plus what you were saying) could be part of whats going on.
Not really, playing sports doesn't give the "immersive" experience of spending several days at a time in the back country, sports kit doesn't have the meaning attached to it that a uniform does, etc etc. I was a cadet rather than a scout but even decades later it still shapes my thinking.
I dunno, I dumped the Boy Scouts as soon as I started playing sports. It didn't help that there were legitimate, registered sex offenders involved in the leadership of the local troop. But really it was that it was just easier and more fun to just go out in the back country and do stuff on your own than to put up with all the red tape and bureaucracy and fiddle-frigging around that Scouts entailed.
