Understanding groups in outdoor adventure education through social network analysis

Relationships are a critical component to the experience of an outdoor adventure education (OAE) program, therefore, more fruitful ways of investigating groups is needed. Social network analysis (SNA) is an effective tool to study the relationship structure of small groups. This paper provides an explanation of SNA and shows how it was used by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) to understand the relationship patterns among different course compositions with students receiving and not receiving scholarships (course compositions included two students, 50% of students, and all students receiving scholarship). Data were collected from three 30-day courses at three different time points throughout the course and were based on two dimensions of cohesion (social and task). The findings suggest that the most homogeneous group (in regard to scholarship recipients) possessed greater social cohesion and the least homogenous group possessed greater task cohesion. Social network analysis should be used more frequently in OAE because it offers a flexible approach to understand groups and group processes.