Enhancing Personal Effectiveness:
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James Neill |
Draft
Note: The section below is out of date (2004), please see the draft above. SummaryThis study conducted a landmark investigation into the effects of outdoor education programs on participants’ personal growth. The Life Effectiveness Questionnaire (LEQ) was used to assess the impacts of different types of outdoor education programs, groups, and participants. The development of the LEQ was extended through confirmatory factor analysis and development of a new version by this study, focusing on measurement of 8 factors of personal life effectiveness, all of which were be significantly and sizeably enhanced in the long-term by all types of outdoor education programs included in this study (N > 3000; 83% of the participants were on programs run by Outward Bound Australia). Overall, the amount of change in personal growth was "moderate", judging by comparisons to effect sizes reported in other outdoor education and psychological change meta-analyses (Hattie, Marsh, Neill, & Richards, 1997; Neill, 2002). Strong outcomes were evident for the long (3-4 week) Outward Bound programs with young adults. The shorter Outward Bound programs and comparative programs tended to achieved small to moderate outcomes, approximately similar to the outcomes reported by other innovative educational and psychological intervention programs. The outcome data revealed considerable within group variability; little variance in the outcomes was explained by the other program, group, or participant independent variables. There were moderately large enhancements of Self Confidence, Time Management, Emotional Control, Task Leadership, and Social Competence. Positive but smaller effects were evident for Intellectual Flexibility, Achievement Motivation, and Active Initiative. The strongest independent predictor of outcomes was the type of outdoor education program. The strongest effects were obtained for programs with Young Adults (17 to 29 years) (.56, n = 1932) and Special groups (.55, n = 95). Smaller effects were found for programs with Adolescents (.32, n = 698), Adults (>29 years) (.40, n = 336), Families (.40, n = 108), and for Corporate Development groups (.39, n = 471). Of all the sub-groups, the most impressive outcomes were for the Outward Bound Australia 22 to 26 day programs for young adults (ES = .63, n = 1431). In fact, with the effect of these young adult Outward Bound Australia programs removed, all other (still largely Outward Bound) programs had similar outcomes to one another (ES = .37, n = 2208), a finding similar to the overall outcomes for previous outdoor education meta-analyses. Followup results (n = 584) for young adult programs suggested reasonable retention of gains up to five months, with a steady loss of gains between five and twelve months. The outcomes were only weakly related to other independent variables measured in this study. This underlines the need to investigate more specific, proximal social, psychological, and educational variables in future process research, particularly constructs emerging from theoretical models of change in other disciplines, as well testing unique models of change developed within outdoor education. The emerging structural programming factors which are proposed as most influencing outcomes are program type (esp. program philosophy/method), program length, group climate (e.g., social support), the natural environment (e.g., Biophilia Hypothesis), and participants’ readiness and capacity for change (e.g., cultural beliefs, personality and coping strategies). Chapters
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