Journal Article Critique: The Effect of Program Setting and Duration on Corporate Team Development

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The Effect of Program Setting and Duration on Corporate Team Development

Part I- About the Article

            This relatively recent article investigated effects of setting and length of an adventure program on increasing teamwork behaviors. This problem was an excellent one to examine, as it provides very useful and practical information about how to best conduct adventure training programs. The contribution of this article extends with it’s inclusion of several good ideas for future research.

            This was a quasi-experimental quantitative study. The subjects were not chosen randomly, but were randomly assigned to four different treatment groups. There was no control group.

Part II- The Critique

            There was no literature review included in this article. The author briefly introduces the line of thought that led to this study. This implies that there had not been any research into this topic at the time this experiment was conducted, but it appears from the reference section that there were at least a few other works at the time that could have been reviewed for the benefit of the reader.

            The sample used in this study was a convenience sample. The subjects and their selection are not described in great detail, but it is likely that the company the subjects were drawn from was not chosen randomly, and that the participants from that company were also not selected at random. Complete random selection would, however, not be appropriate. Since this study investigated the effect of adventure training on teamwork, complete teams of individuals that usually work together would have to be the unit of random selection for the data to be meaningful. Ideally these teams of people would be drawn randomly from a large number of companies. Without knowing more specific information about the company involved knowledge can only be very loosely generalized to other corporate groups.

            The data collection instrument used was the Team Development Indicator. This written test was administered three times per treatment group, one month before treatment, 2 months after the first treatment and 6 months after the first treatment. I feel this instrument was used appropriately to address the question of the effectiveness of these training programs since increased teamwork is usually one of the client goals in a program like this.

            The treatment in this study was a standard set of group initiatives completed by the participants. This is the most common method for this sort of training and is appropriate for investigation into the research question. History is a possible concern for internal validity since it is unknown what may have happened to the groups between tests. Selection does not appear to be a problem since the groups were randomly assigned. Maturation is a second possible concern, considering the length of the study. Pretesting does not seem to be a great threat to validity since results differ greatly between treatment groups. Instrumentation does not appear to be a major concern since the instrument is described as having high validity. Treatment replications are a threat to validity because there were only a small number of groups involved in the study. Subject attrition is not discussed, so it could possibly be a confounding factor. Statistical regression does not appear to be a problem. Diffusion of treatment could have occurred, especially since the groups were from the same organization. Experimenter effects are minimized by the use of the same two facilitators and the same initiatives for all groups.

            The data from this study were analyzed using 3x2x2 three factor ANOVAs. Exact statistics are not given, only descriptions of effects as significant or insignificant. There is a graph that informatively illustrates the results.

            The conclusions reached were that location does not appear to have an effect on team development, but program duration has a significant effect with periodic, shorter, programs being more effective than one, longer program. Despite lack of exact information about the extent of the significance, I believe this conclusion is valid, as scores on the instrument differed by approximately 20% between groups on the program duration variable.

Part III- My Reflections

            This is one of the better studies in outdoor education I have come across recently. The experimental design is tight, with lack of a control group and concerns about convenience sampling being the only major limitations. The study definitely could have gone into more detail in reporting about the sampling procedure, sample population, statistical results, and literature review. It is such a good article in other ways that it makes me think that it was written to be short and non-technical for a reason. This information about the effect of program length on effectiveness is very useful to know personally as an outdoor educator. If I were planning a longer group development session with a group, I would encourage several shorter sessions over one longer session.

Reference

Priest, S. (1998). The effect of program setting and duration on corporate team

            development. The Journal of Experiential Education, 21(2), 111-112.