Does Religion Help with Nature Exposure? Faith as a Moderator During Summer Camp

Background: The positive youth development (PYD) movement utilizes a strengths-based approach in which specific conditions can be facilitated to promote social, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and moral/spiritual growth that contributes to further successful lifelong development amongst adolescents (Park & Peterson, 2006). A prominent PYD model proposed by Lerner and colleagues (2005) is the Five Cs model of youth development – Competence, Confidence, Connection, Character, and Caring. According to this model targeting the 5 Cs promotes increases in development assets (DA) resulting in enhanced subjective well-being (SWB) and eudemonic well-being (EWB) as well as reduced mental health symptomology (Vitterso, 2016; Gillham et al., 2011). This suggests a dynamic and reciprocal link between DA, SWB/EWB, and mental health-promoting behaviors, which has been noted for camp experiences (Garst et al., 2016). In summer camps, PYD may be enhanced by outdoor experiences and exposure to nature, both of which are linked with cognitive, behavioral, and spiritual changes including recovery from fatigue, facilitating social cohesion, opportunities for physical activity, stress reduction, improved cognition, lower risk of depression/anxiety and enhanced spiritual experiences (Clearly et al., 2017; Chang et al., 2020). Such findings suggest that individuals may derive greater wellbeing from experiences in nature due to mechanisms associated with spiritual fulfillment (Trigwell et al., 2014). Daily R/S experiences are strong predictors of both life satisfaction, positive affect, and meaning in life or EWB (Yoon et al., 2014). Purpose: This may indicate that a plausible mechanism of action by which youth may differentially benefit from camp experiences is through heightened religiosity or spirituality (R/S) including greater religious attendance or self-reported religiosity which may lead to greater prosocial outcomes including character development. However, research on the moderating effect of R/S on outdoor adventure experiences for high school aged youth is limited. Methods: The current study was conducted on approximately 120 students who underwent a 2-week camping expedition with The Woods Project (TWP), most of whom were moderately religious (68.9%). R/S measured as a trait variable based on extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity were used as moderators to account for changes in pre- to post-trip outcome variables. Results: significant pre to post changes on 11 of the 12 outcome variables were found signifying that most students benefited from TWP. Regression analysis with age, ethnicity, and gender as covariates and extrinsic/intrinsic religiosity (separated) found mostly non-significant findings, such that religious/spiritual students did not differ significantly on the amount of change in outcome variables. Findings include one significant trend toward less growth and three non-significant trends toward greater growth associated with R/S. Importantly, the observed effects all moderators assessed, including R/S and race/ethnicity, were small and the study was underpowered to find small effects. Conclusion: Taken together, the study found minimal moderation of the robust pre-to postchanges observed. Further research on moderators of PYD program outcomes will need very large sample sizes to have sufficient power. Also, future studies should look at complex interactions around acculturation, identity formation, operationalization of religiosity/spirituality, and the role of secular and religious camping expeditions on positive youth development.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

School Psychology

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Rizvi, Syed Aun

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Smith, Bradley

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Gonzalez, Jorge
• Kim, Hanjoe
• de Dios, Marcel

• Educational psychology

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10657/19955

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/19955