Why Randomized Trials Are Challenging Within Adventure Therapy Research: Lessons Learned in Norway

There are few high-quality studies using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in the adventure and wilderness therapy literature. Thus, a unison call is heard for more such studies to be carried out. This article presents a Norwegian wilderness therapy research project that planned to incorporate thi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of experiential education 2016-03, Vol.39 (1), p.5-14
Main Authors: Gabrielsen, Leiv Einar, Fernee, Carina Ribe, Aasen, Gunnar Oland, Eskedal, Leif Torvald
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescents
Adventure Education
At Risk Students
At risk youth
Clinical outcomes
Control Groups
Ethics
Experimental Groups
Foreign Countries
Health
Intervention
Mixed Methods Research
Norway
Outcomes of Treatment
Outdoor Education
Psychotherapy
Randomized Controlled Trials
Research Methodology
Research Problems
Research Projects
Scientific Research
Therapy
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:There are few high-quality studies using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in the adventure and wilderness therapy literature. Thus, a unison call is heard for more such studies to be carried out. This article presents a Norwegian wilderness therapy research project that planned to incorporate this “gold standard” that is regarded as the most scientific and rigorous approach available. We did not succeed. Mounting challenges led us to discard the RCT altogether and select other methodologies. Here, we account for the ethical, health outcome, practical, and empirical obstacles that we encountered when attempting to randomize at-risk adolescents into experiment and control groups. Our conclusion is that although RCTs may be superior in some aspects, they hold the potential to become bad science when the interventions are as complex and multi-faceted as adventure and wilderness therapy programs.
ISSN:1053-8259
2169-009X
DOI:10.1177/1053825915607535