After 2 years it's time to talk about the findings from the research that we've been conducting at Quest. We found that our campers showed big gains across a wide variety of areas! Kids who came to camp showed decreases in aggressive behavior, better ability to recognize and interpret social cues, and improved social communication. Finally, Quest campers showed improvement on an overall survey of their potential challenging areas like following directions and impulsivity.
Naturally, we're really excited about these findings because it's even more evidence that Quest works for our campers (children 6 to 18 with mild to moderate social, emotional, and/or behavioral difficulties). Emotion regulation and aggression are tied closely together. We think that Quest techniques like our point system and providing varied opportunities to practice the emotion regulation skills we teach are the key to bringing about those improvements. The same goes for the leaps forward we saw in social skills too. Campers get lots of chances to practice new social skills, and build friendships using techniques that we teach and model. In the end our campers come away from Quest with lots of skills to tackle tough feelings and make new friends.
Being able to recognize and interpret social cues gives our campers vital insight into the world of unspoken communication that so many of them miss. This insight only gets more important as children get older and the rules become less clear. The gains here show that Quest is great for teaching children important parts of being a good friend. The increases in social communication empower our campers to use their words to express their feelings, thoughts, and needs so that they can be equal partners in their friendships, and advocate for their needs and wants in appropriate and effective ways.
We collected this information by sending out survey packets to parents before and after camp. The surveys had lots of questions about different possible areas of difficulty for our campers. Then I compared the scores from before and after camp. In the end we had 47 families participate in the 2 summers of data collection.
We went in to this study with the expectation that we'd see improvements like these since our found camp in the Bay Area has already been shown to reduce aggression, impulsivity, hyperactivity, and inattention, while increasing peer relations, family relations, self-esteem, behavioral control, and athletic competency. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of research on therapeutic camps. However, what is there suggests that therapeutic camps provide a promising way to help with lots of different issues. The Quest Therapeutic Model has core aspects in common with other programs that have been shown to work. On top of that, individual components of Quest camp (like our point system) have been used to treat children just like our campers with lots of success as well. We're thrilled to add this study to growing body of research that says camp is awesome.
Collecting information like this about Quest is important because it helps us see if our program is doing what it's supposed to do. In this instance, we've seen that Quest is effectively decreasing aggressive behavior and impulsivity, while improving following directions and our campers' ability to recognize and interpret social cues and demonstrate improved social communication. We'll keep collecting information so that we can continue to paint a complete picture of Quest excellence. Big thanks to the parents that participated over the last few years. You're now a part of Quest history!
[1] Smith, B. K., Therapeutic Summer Camp Outcomes and Negative Mood Regulation Expectancies. (2015). California State University, Fullerton, Thesis.
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