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Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

Abstract

While family leisure is a growing area of inquiry, focus on family outdoor recreation or family adventure experiences remains limited. Outdoor recreation and camping experiences, however, are particularly well suited to enhancing family bonding and cohesiveness (Hawkes, 1991). This has been suggested to be the case because of the unfamiliar environment, the social structure, and the types of interactions required to successfully negotiate the environment and task (Huff, Widmer, McCoy, & Hill, 2003). Much of the existing research in this area has focused on organized family camping experiences (Agate & Covey, 2007; Taylor, 2006) or short-term adventure experiences, usually one to two days in length (Freeman & Zabriskie, 2002; Kugath, 1997). However, a handful of authors have investigated longer programs with promising results.

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