Sounds like you would need a join, junction or linking table to store the information using a many-to-many relationship, a link between the Scouts table and Badges table. A scout can have many badges, and a badge can be earned by many scouts. The Merits linking table could have a scout field linking back to Scouts, and a badge field linking back to Badges, and a DateEarned field that stores the date the badge was earned by the scout.