Enhancing life effectiveness : the impacts of outdoor education programs

Abstract

Outdoor education offers a promising method for developing life skills, however this field is undermined by ad hoc theory and limited research. This thesis offers a critical synthesis of theoretical and empirical outdoor education literature, develops instrumentation to measure life effectiveness, and reports on a large, longitudinal study of outdoor education program life effectiveness outcomes. Outdoor education was reviewed as consisting of seven theoretically interactive domains (participant, environment, program, activity, group, instructor, and culture) within a dynamic, experiential milieu. A theoretical systems framework is proposed, drawing on Dewey’s theory of experience, to illustrate how participants’ experiences of outdoor education might be understood as arising within a “complex system”. A critical review of traditional and meta-analytic reviews of empirical outdoor education research indicated small-moderate positive impacts on typically measured outcomes (e.g. self-concept, locus of control, and social skills; ES ~ 0.35). However, this research has been limited by a lack of appropriate dependent measures, low statistical power, over-reliance on inferential statistics, a lack of control and comparison groups, a lack of longitudinal data, and a lack of investigation of independent variables. To address such issues, Study 1 developed new measurement instrumentation and Study 2 conducted a large, longitudinal study. “Life effectiveness” was proposed to refer to generic life skills which facilitate surviving and thriving across a variety of situations. Life effectiveness skills were further proposed to be enhanceable through intervention. Study 1 investigated the psychometrics of the 11-factor, 64-item Life Effectiveness Questionnaire version G (LEQ-G) through congeneric and confirmatory factor analyses (N = 1,164). Three problematic factors and several weaker items were removed, leading to an 8-factor, 24-item model (LEQ-H) with an excellent fit (TLI = .984; N = 1,892). A global second-order model also provided an excellent fit (TLI = .980), with evidence for factorial invariance of the second-order factor across gender and age, and promising evidence for factorial invariance of the first-order model. Further development of the LEQ was recommended to consider construct validity, other life effectiveness factors, and ongoing item development (e.g. to reduce skewness).