Megan Sanner

Article Critique

The article Youth Development and the Camp Experience written by Barry A. Garst and

M. Deborah Bialeschki explains ,through a study, the importance of positive youth development

and how camp experience has a major impact in that development. The purpose of this study is

to prove that the camp experience contributes largely to the positive youth development. The

American Camp Association (ACA) conducted a study from 2003 to 2007 to identify the

developmental outcomes of the camp experience, a benchmarking study of the youth

development supports and opportunities pro-vided through camp experiences, and a program

improvement project directed toward enhancing supports and opportunities provided by camps.

ACA also interviewed the parents of campers to see if they have noticed youth development in

their child after going to camp. There are many models that helped develop this study such as

Search Institutes forty assets model, the targeting life skills model, the ve Cs of positive youth

development, and the Community Action Framework for Youth Development. Results from this

study indicated that campers experienced growth in a wide variety of areas, including self-

esteem, peer relationships, independence, adventure and exploration, leadership, environmental

awareness, friendship skills, values and decisions, social comfort, and spirituality (Garst and

Bialeschki). Even though this study had great outcomes there are limitations in evert study. In

this study specifically some of the limitations include short camp sessions, normal development

(maturation), and demographics and individual differences can confound accurate measurement.

Because of these limitations youth researchers have begun to investigate how a focus on quality

program improvement might allow camp programs greater control over the processes that target

developmental outcomes (Garst and Bialeschki). My opinion of this study is a positive one. I

was a camper all throughout my life and I always enjoyed camp and came home well refreshed
and excited to go back. I believe if I were a part of this study I would have been a positive

contributor, as were most campers in this study. I do believe that resident camps teach much

more and day camps simply because the campers life is totally different in that 1-2 week ratio.

This gives the camper enough time to really grow and figure out who he/she really is or wants to

be like. This study may have some limitations, but they are nothing compared to the positive

outcomes of the positive youth development through camp experience.