Toward the Development of an Adventure.doc

PROJECT DEMONSTRATING EXCELLENCE Evaluation of Life Effectiveness and Leadership Development in a Challenge Day Program for High School Students by Terry L. Nail Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a Concentration in Arts and Sciences and a Specialization in Leadership August 18, 2007 Core Faculty Advisor: Chris Hables Gray, Ph.D Union Institute University Cincinnati, Ohio ? 2007 by Terry Nail All rights reserved. ABSTRACT Evaluation of Life Effectiveness and LeadershipDevelopment of a Challenge Day Program for High School Students Keywords: Leadership, Youth Development, High School, Evaluation, Life Effectiveness, Experiential Education, Adventure Education, and Challenge Day Terry Nail The purpose of this study was to determine to what extent Challenge Day and its follow up Challenger Program improved life effectiveness and developed leadership in high school students. Additionally, it examined the relationships between students’ life effectiveness and leadership, and their ethnicity, gender, and grade in school. A secondary goal of this study was to provide Challenge Day program staff, program beneficiaries, and program sponsors with information on the outcomes of their program activities regarding noticing oppression and isolation, implementing safe and effective intervention tools, making contributions, and demonstrating acts of integrity. Challenge Day has not had a formal evaluation of this program prior to this study. This study was an outcome-based program evaluation with a pre-posttest design, which included the Life Effectiveness Questionnaire (LEQ), developed by James Neill (Neill, Marsh, Richards, 2003), additional leadership items, program generated questions, and a content analysis of self-reflection logs completed by students participating in the follow up Challenger Program. There are eight d