Youth Satisfaction Survey (2025-26)
A high-level overview of what sixth-grade students said about their experience, the relationships they built, and the lessons they planned to carry home.
Three themes define the responses
A Strong Student Experience
Across every core experience question, at least 94% of respondents selected Agree or Strongly Agree.
The strongest responses center on relationships, safety, and overall enjoyment. Students were especially positive about spending time with High School Leaders and Outdoor Lab Interns, reinforcing the importance of the near-peer leadership model. At the same time, 96% reported feeling safe and 95% said they would recommend Outdoor Lab to a friend—strong indicators that the residential experience is both welcoming and memorable.
Learning That Travels Home
Students connected Outdoor Lab lessons to concrete choices they could make in their daily lives.
The survey suggests that the experience extends beyond enjoyment. Students reported greater awareness of how to care for themselves, their communities, and the environment, and their open-ended reflections translated those ideas into practical actions—from helping others and taking responsibility to recycling, picking up trash, conserving resources, and paying closer attention to the people and places around them.
What Students Valued/What Challenged Them
Open-ended responses add context to the headline satisfaction numbers.
Students most often praised the program’s classes and outdoor activities, followed by social connections and shared time with friends and leaders. Their most common frustrations were different in character: hiking and physical demands, comfort and facilities, and early mornings or limited free time. In other words, the strongest negative themes were primarily physical and logistical—not a rejection of the overall experience, which remained highly rated.
What the results tell us
- Engagement is consistently high: students described Outdoor Lab as fun, interesting, safe, and recommendable at rates above 94%.
- Relationships are a defining strength: positive ratings for High School Leaders and Interns were among the highest in the entire survey.
- Stewardship is showing up in students’ own language: they described kindness, environmental care, responsibility, respect, empathy, integrity, commitment, and awareness as actions they could continue at home and school.
- The most common challenges point to the realities of a residential outdoor experience—physical exertion, comfort, sleep, and schedule—while overall satisfaction remains very strong.
For supporters of the Outdoor Lab Foundation, the central takeaway is clear: respondents describe an experience that combines engaging learning, meaningful relationships, and a strong orientation toward stewardship—and they overwhelmingly say they would recommend it to a friend.
Source and methodology
Outdoor Lab 2025–26 Youth Satisfaction and Reflection Survey. The response spreadsheet contains 1,005 sixth-grade responses collected October 14, 2025–May 14, 2026. The survey review notes 4,118 total attendees, voluntary and anonymous participation, and administration in partnership with home-school teachers. Open-ended responses were grouped into recurring themes; because one response can contain multiple ideas, theme percentages may overlap and do not sum to 100%. Headline percentages are shown as whole numbers for readability and consistency with the existing survey infographic.
