Effects of a Developmental Adventure on the Self-Esteem of College Students

This study examines the effects of outdoor developmental adventure programming (ODA) on college students’ self-esteem. Although some previous studies have shown that outdoor adventure programming has positive effects on self-esteem, others did not find any effect. A quasi-experimental study was cond...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of experiential education 2014-09, Vol.37 (3), p.216-231
Main Authors: Paquette, Linda, Brassard, Audrey, Guérin, Audrey, Fortin-Chevalier, Justine, Tanguay-Beaudoin, Laurence
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adventure
Adventure Education
College Students
Comparative Analysis
Design of experiments
Multivariate Analysis
Pretests Posttests
Quasiexperimental Design
Questionnaires
Self Esteem
Sports
Statistical Analysis
Student attitudes
Team Sports
Travel
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This study examines the effects of outdoor developmental adventure programming (ODA) on college students’ self-esteem. Although some previous studies have shown that outdoor adventure programming has positive effects on self-esteem, others did not find any effect. A quasi-experimental study was conducted over 5 months, which included two pretests and two posttests to address some limitations of previous studies. A total of 84 participants completed the Questionnaire d’estime de soi hiérarchique, a questionnaire assessing self-esteem on four occasions. The experimental group (outdoor adventure; n = 32) was compared with the control groups (travel, n = 17; soccer, n = 35) using repeated measures of covariance analyses. Positive and significant increases were found for the athletic dimension of self-esteem and for global self-esteem for the experimental group (outdoor adventure) only. The increased benefits provided by the combination of adventure and sports in ODA, over sports-only or traveling-only interventions, underline the importance of developing ODA with college students.
ISSN:1053-8259
2169-009X
DOI:10.1177/1053825913498372