An Examination of Social Capital in Outdoor Orientation Programs

Social capital offers campus recreation professionals a framework to conceptualize the impacts of outdoor orientation programming (OOPs). Using data from The Outdoor Orientation Benchmarking Survey (TOOBS), researchers explored results of participants’ (n = 1,154) responses to two constructs conceptually related to social capital: group trust and network closure. Researchers used factor analysis to examine the psychometric properties of TOOBS, finding group trust and network closure represented different aspects of social capital. Results of the study confirms trust and network closure are related, yet unique aspects of the social capital construct. The results provide an empirically-supported measure for evaluating social capital in outdoor orientation programs.