Impact of operation: Military kids residential camping programs on military youth's self-efficacy toward military related resiliency skills

Christy Dawn Clary, Purdue University

Abstract

With the current overseas efforts of the United States military, service members are being deployed at unprecedented rates. As these service members are being deployed overseas, they leave behind families, many of which include children. Operation: Military Kids (OMK) is a program that was developed to meet the needs of military youth and help them become resilient in the face of deployment. One of the ways that OMK identified to help meet the needs of this special population is through residential camping programs. Supplemental grants were offered to OMK programs as a partnership with the Office of the Secretary of Defense to provide camps for military youth. Specific skills were identified in 2012 for the camps to focus on self-efficacy, communication, coping and social. Although many states have offered residential camps, limited research has been done into the overall effectiveness of these camps and the designated skills. The literature identified residential camps as a positive youth development experience that is effective in building life skills and that military youth feel more comfortable talking to other military youth about deployment. The purpose of this study was to explore to what extent these camps affected military youth's self-efficacy toward the other three identified skills. The participants were military youth (n = 35) who attended Indiana or Ohio's 2012 OMK camps and their parents or guardians (n = 48). A retrospective post/pretest methodology was used to evaluate participants approximately three months after the respective camp. Positive gains were seen across all three skill sets from both the youth and adult perspectives. Both youth and adults rated youth at or above the moderately confident level across every question on the military self-efficacy questionnaire. Youth and adults both perceived the highest increase for youths' self-efficacy toward their communication skills. Youth reported the largest increase in their ability to tell others why they are proud to be from a military family. Adults reported the largest increases in their campers' ability to make and keep friends who are from a military family. This study found that the 2012 OSD/OMK camps were successful in building the respondents' self-efficacy toward the three resiliency life skills of communication, coping and social.

Degree

M.S.

Advisors

Peters, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Social studies education|Military studies

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