Education needs and job satisfaction in forest recreation

Abstract

This study investigated various aspects of knowledge and skills needed to adequately perform outdoor recreation management. Its objectives were aimed at examining the relationships among formal education, experience in forest recreation jobs, and satisfaction with the skills gained in the practicing profession. A two-stage stratified sample was used to survey 566 forest recreation professionals working in nine regions of the USDA Forest Service. Data were collected using a mail questionnaire. The response rate was 72.9 percent. Six hypotheses were structured to address the research questions and the objectives of the study. The most interesting result showed that the relationship between satisfaction with skills gained on-the-job and education level was negative. A positive relationship was found between educational level and satisfaction with formal education. Experience in recreation jobs and age of the respondents showed a significant positive relationship with satisfaction with skills gained on-the-job. Slightly less than fifty percent of the respondents considered university-level course work in recreation as necessary to perform their recreation job. Results showed significant differences among professionals in considering these courses as necessary. On the other hand, sampled professionals, in rating forty-three different subject areas, considered they needed a high degree of competence (to perform recreation management), mainly in subjects related to personal skills. Additionally, canonical discriminant analysis revealed that some of these subject areas are highly correlated with the different types of professionals. On theoretical grounds, the importance of this research is that it supports relationships between job satisfaction and individual differences as reported by the literature, but never tested before for outdoor recreation professionals at a national level. In this case, however, it was satisfaction with the skills gained on-the-job and its relation with several selected variables that showed similar findings as those reported by empirical research. Practical implications are mainly related to (1) improving the opportunities of these professionals in continuing education and (2) attempting to integrate them as part of the regular work-load.