DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS OF CERTIFIED AND NON-CERTIFIED CAMP DIRECTORS IN THE UNITED STATES.

Abstract

Sorry, the full text of this article is not available in Huskie Commons. Please click on the alternative location to access it.

122 p.

Through an examination of a particular emerging profession which had a voluntary certification program, it was the general goal of this study to gather data about some of the characteristics of those who did and did not participate in such a program. It was expected that such information would be of use to continuing professional educators as they address the issues of certification, professionalization, and mandatory continuing education in other occupations and professions.This study was specifically concerned with determining whether the level of professionalism and other selected demographic and occupational variables related to the attributes of professionalization serve to distinguish between those who voluntarily participate in a certification program and those who did not. The particular occupation selected for this study was the administration of organized camping.The following hypothesis was tested. It is in the null form.None of the following independent variables significantly distinguishes between certified and non-certified camp directors: (1) professionalism subscales of the Hall Professionalism Scale; (2) years as a camp director; (3) affiliation of the camp directed (agency, religiously affiliated, or private.); (4) level of education; (5) years as a member of the American Camping Association; (6) degree of full-time involvement in the occupation; (7) participation in the professional association activities; (8) involvement in related professional associations; (9) participation in formal continuing education activities; (10) participation in informal continuing education activities; (11) type of camp directed; (12) age; (13) sex; (14) geographic region in which the director's membership in the association is held.A minimum tolerance level of .001 for the Wilks' Lamda was the criterion for controlling the selection of discriminating variables. The .05 level was selected as the minimum for designation of a discriminating variable as statistically significant.The demographic and occupational information was gathered through a researcher devised questionnaire, and the level of professionalism was measured by the revised Hall Professionalism Scale.The questionnaire was mailed to a stratified random sample of all camp directors in the United States who were members of the American Camping Association and who had at least three years experience as a director. There were 550 people in the initial sample. A 80% response rate was achieved.A factor analysis the scores from the Hall Scale was conducted to determine if the original five factor version held for this particular population. It did not. An eight factor solution was obtained which accounted for over 60% of the variance.A discriminant analysis was performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program on the factor scores resulting from the analysis of the professionalism subscales and from the scores of the first part of the questionnaire which gathered occupational and demographic data.The major findings of the study were that ten variables which when combined into a discriminant function could distinguish between the two groups of directors. Through the use of the discriminant function coefficients, 75% of the actual certified and non-certified directors could be correctly classified. Seven of these variables were significant at less than the .05 level. The variables were convention attendance, factor 7 (autonomy II), time devoted to the occupation, years experience, Factor 1 (identification with the professional association), geographic region, and formal continuing education. The null hypothesis was rejected.In addition to determining a profile of practitioners who did and did not participate in a formal continuing professional education program, the results of the study confirmed a connection between the structural and attitudinal attributes of professionalization.