The Effect of High School Outdoor-Based Adventure Leadership Programs in Independent Schools on Personal Effectiveness and Locus of Control

This experiment-based research project examined whether an independent high school outdoor leadership program can effect a change within an adolescent, using the constructs of life effectiveness and locus of control to measure for that effect. Research participants were drawn from Albuquerque Academy, an independent high school that has semester-long outdoor leadership classes, using those students not enrolled in these classes as a comparison. While both of these groups had a small, but statistically significant, increase in life effectiveness the differences between the groups was not significant. There were statistically significant changes in the subscales of active involvement, leadership ability, quality seeking, self-confidence, self-efficacy, social effectiveness, and stress management. For a second analysis, three groups were compared: an Outdoor Leadership Group, an Other Leadership Group, and a Non-Leadership Group. The Outdoor Leadership Group had higher post-test scores than the Non-Leadership Group in the areas of active involvement, cooperative teamwork, self-confidence, and social effectiveness. Both the Outdoor Leadership Group and the Other Leadership Groups reported a higher mean score than the Non-Leadership Group in the pre-test and the post-test in the areas of leadership ability