The effects of a leisure education programme on the self concepts and life effectiveness of at-risk youth in Taiwan

For a long time in Western countries, outdoor adventure education programmes have been used with at-risk youth. Following these successful examples, the City-Guy Foundation in Taiwan organised a 28-day programme for 12 at-risk youth during July and August 2004. A self concept scale and a life effectiveness questionnaire were used to examine the effects of this programme. The findings reported here show that the participants improved their self-concepts and on all the measures of life effectiveness. The paper concludes with some implications of the findings for future research and future leisure education programmes for at-risk youth.