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| National Survey of Australian Outdoor Youth Programs |
| SUMMARY REPORT: April 2012 | |
Prepared by:
Dr Ian Williams - Murdoch Childrens Research Institute
Professor Nick Allen - University of Melbourne
April 2012
Download / Read the report here:
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The Outdoor Youth Programs Research Alliance (OYPRA) is an Australian group founded in 2009 with the aim of establishing quality evidence of the extent to which outdoor, camping and nature‐based programs are associated with reliable improvements in resilience, learning and wellbeing among young people. In 2011, OYPRA undertook a survey of Australian providers of outdoor programs in which staff who worked on existing programs were asked to reflect on their current practice. The study set out to establish, for the first time, a comprehensive picture of the scope and diversity of outdoor youth programs on offer in Australia. Survey questions were designed to provide relatively objective, quantifiable measures of program characteristics and focused on features believed to be important for enhancing participant outcomes.
A number of key themes emerged from the data gathered. First, outdoor youth programs in Australia represent an incredible diversity of practice, varying on characteristics such as duration, participant group size, physical setting, activities used, staff‐to‐participant ratios, and program goals. However, despite this diversity, there are also important points of commonality across many programs. These aspects in common include the explicit use of personal challenge, activity and experience as a basis of learning, exposure to nature, guidance of participant experiences, and consideration of social context in the design of outdoor programs. Second, it was notable that practitioners in this field clearly identified personal and social development of participants as the most salient goals of their outdoor programs, over and above other possible goals such as curriculum education, environmental learning or technical skill enhancement.
Further, practitioners proposed that the majority of young people actually derived these intended development benefits through their participation and involvement. Third, practitioners overwhelmingly based their evaluation of the outcomes of their work on informal forms of evidence, such as personal
observation or anecdotal participant reports. Although such evidence is essential for the development of practitioner expertise, it is noteworthy that rigorous research is typically not identified as part of the basis for evaluating outcomes, clearly limiting the development of evidence based practice in this area.
This project seeks to ensure that the nation’s outdoor resources are fully utilised for the benefit of young people. No other opportunities are as readily available to youth as outdoor and camping programs that also address three of the most pressing priorities for young people in our community: mental wellbeing, physical activity and environmental awareness. Outdoor programs represent a largely untapped opportunity to promote emotional health and wellbeing. Rigorous development of the research base in this area will be critical to transforming the field to one of evidence based practice, so that the potential of these programs to maximise youth development and prevent negative outcomes for young people and the communities in which they live can be realised.
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