2010 Volume 7 Pages 25-39
The purpose of this study was 1) to develop a leadership assessment scale for group activities（LASGA）and a followership assessment scale for group activities（FASGA）and 2) to investigate the effects of Project Adventure（PA）Program as an Outdoor Education Program on promoting the leadership and followership of Japanese university students.
As a preliminary survey to confirm the reliabilities and the validities of LASGA and FASGA，352 Japanese university students（male=162，female=189，no answer＝1) were asked to answer a questionnaire，which was composed of socio−demographical，LASGA and FASGA questions in July 2008. On this study，the subjects were 136 university students who were divided into two groups：PA group（PAG）and Control Group（CG）．The subjects of PAG（male =31，female=26，mean age=20.67，SD=1.23）participated in an outdoor education class using methods of PA Program while those of CG（male=31，female=48，mean age=19.21，SD=1.13）attended a regular lecture−style class. The subjects of both of the groups were asked to answer a questionnaire（socio−demographical，LASGA and FASGA questions）on the first day（pre−test）and last day（post−test）of their class in September 2008.
In order to explore the structure of LASGA and FASGA，exploratory factor analyses，reliability analyses and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted. In order to analyze the effects of the PA program，two−way repeated measures ANOVA（Group × Time）and Bonferroni's post hoc tests were conducted on LASGA and FASGA.
The results of exploratory factor analyses identified a five−factor solution with twenty items on LASGA and a four−factor solution with twelve items of FASGA，both with acceptable reliabilities and validities. Two−way repeated measures ANOVA revealed that the mean scores of all the subscales of LASGA（Decisions，Persistent，Confidence，Norm，and Responsibility）and FASGA（Third Personal Support，Circumstantial Judgment，Second Personal Support，and Group Norm）of PAG were significantly increased between pre−test and post−test，while no such differences in the mean scores of CG were found between pre−test and post−test.
The results of the preliminary survey indicated that LASGA and FASGA can be useful in assessing the leadership and followership of university students. The development of FASGA is of note since followership assessment scales have hardly been addressed in Japanese prior research. The results of this study suggested that the outdoor education sessions using methods of PA Program could contribute to advancement of the leadership and followership of university students by enhancing the opportunities of communication and social support resources.
