A Closer Look at the Camp Experience: Examining Relationships Between Life Skills, Elements of Positive Youth Development, and Antecedents of Change Among Camp Alumni

The Role of Camp in Shaping College Readiness and Building a Pathway to the Future for Camp Alumni

“…Some questions used in this survey were adapted from scales developed by Garst, Gagnon & Whittington (2016), which examined life skill development as reported by camp alumni. …”

Understanding the Role of Summer Camps in the Learning Landscape: An Exploratory Sequential Study

“…Retrospective studies on long-term camp outcomes are limited but provide some insight into what lessons from camp may carry over into adulthood. A study involving adults who attended camp as children identified camp-related outcomes within three broad categories: selfdetermined behavior (e.g., confidence, self-efficacy, friendships, initiative, competence), critical thinking, and physical well-being (Garst et al, 2016). Whittington and Garst (2018) examined how camp participation was related to skills associated with college readiness with a sample of alumni.…”

“…However, many of the studies of long-term camp outcomes have relied on convenience samples that could be overly biased toward camp experiences. For example, Garst and colleagues (Garst et al, 2016;Whittington & Garst, 2018) invited 350 camps to recruit alumni through email lists and Facebook, resulting in a sample of approximately 427 alumni responses solicited from an unknown number of camps; their sample was 97% white, 79% female, and ranged in age from 18 to over 75. More representative samples (e.g., Bialeschki et al, 2007; did not examine the impact of camp participation into adulthood, or even beyond a year removed from camp.…”

“…Summer camp is an important setting for learning and developing social and emotional learning skills (SEL), with an estimated 14 million youth attending camp in the United States each summer (American Camp Association, 2016). There is a need for more empirical evidence that summer camp participation offers long-term impact and value far beyond the experience, thereby adding to the existing body of literature on camp outcomes (e.g., Garst, Gagnon, & Whittington, 2016;Whittington & Garst, 2018;Wilson & Sibthorp, 2018). There is also a need for more research that examines how camp contributes to particular SEL outcomes as compared to other learning settings like school, home, sports, and other out-of-school-time activities.…”

“…Attaining nationally representative data on long-term learning from summer camp is difficult, largely due to the logistical challenges of accessing a large sample of previous campers' years after attending multiple summer camps in their youth. While an abundance of research has indicated that summer camps have near-term value to youth (e.g., Bialeschki et al, 2007) and studies have demonstrated the potential for long-term impacts with convenience samples of camp alumni (e.g., Garst et al, 2016), research on broader samples years after camp participation remains scarce.…”