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This study looks at essential aspects of the Walsh and Golins (1976) model of the Outward Bound process in the context of current adventure education literature and theory and seeks to test the relationships between participant antecedent factors, perceptions of characteristics of an adventure experience, and self-efficacy. Findings supported the importance of participant antecedent factors in the adventure experience. Participant motives and expectations were most strongly related to perceptions of characteristics of the adventure experience (personal empowerment and learning relevance). Perceptions of personal empowerment and learning relevance were found to be associated with changes in reported self-efficacy. The anticipated direct link between the antecedent factors and the changes in self-efficacy was not supported by this study. Additionally, a decrease in socially desirable responses was reported at course completion. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.
KEYWORDS: Adventure education, outdoor recreation, empirical model testing.
Adventure-based and outdoor experiential programs remain popular for recreational, developmental, and therapeutic uses. Adventure based programs are used in schools, community programs, camps, and corporate settings around the globe. The abundance of affirmative research and evaluation findings supports the notion that these programs have the potential to enact change in participants and groups among a variety of populations and a number of environmental settings (e.g., Hattie, Marsh, Neill, & Richards, 1997; Hans, 2000; Cason & Gillis, 1994). While the preponderance of positive research findings indicates that development (e.g., increases in self-esteem, self-efficacy, trust, group cohesion) through adventure based programs is possible, how and why this development occurs remains less clear.
Given the breadth of adventure applications, and the abundance of outcome-based research, it is critical to the continued success of the field that closer examination is afforded to the process behind adventure education and to the identification of specific programmatic and design components that are most critical to fostering developmental outcomes. While many have called for such research (Ewert, 1989; Hanna, 1992; Hattie, et al., 1997; Henderson & Fox, 1994; Kelley, Coursey, & Selby, 1997; Klint, 1999; Scherl 1990; Warner, 1999), few quality studies are available to guide practice, and programming decisions remain largely an enigmatic process based on gut instinct, past experience, and borrowed or untested philosophical understanding or belief.
A cadre of philosophers and theoreticians have offered...