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STUDY OF VARIABLES ASSOCIATED WITH SEPARATION
ANXIETY AT A SUMR CAMP

by

Howard Green and Valerie Garetin

AN ABSTRACT 03* .3. 1333mm PROJECT

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MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF SOCIAL WORK

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK

1967

 

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ABSTRACT

This study was undertaken to determine if separation
anxiety, commonly referred to as homesickness, could be

predicted prior to its expression or even prior to the

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arrival of a child at camp for a short nineteen day
separation. The basic plan for the study was to collect
data from camper information sheets filled out by the
parents, counsellor evaluation sheets or the campers, and
records of the caseworkernfbr four samples of children:

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homesick females, homesic} males, non-homesick females and
non—homesick males. The pee hundred and fifty children

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half homesick, were analysed to determine if there were
characteristics which differentiated the homesick group
from the non—homesick group. Markfs Criterion Pattern

Analysis, programmed for the CDC 3600 was used to elicit

sets of characteristics common to any criteria group.

Results arrived at from this study suggest that the
ability to predict separation anxiety prior to the child's
expression of homesickness is not feasible. No single
variable or set of variables were isolated which made it

11

 

 

iii

possible to predict homesickness or its absence. A trend
however did appear through all four criteria groups which
indicated a successful overall adjustment to camp. Children
whose parents had an intact marriage. who came from a low
economic status and who had good eating habits as rated by

a camp counsellor showed a better adjustment to camp than
those children not showing any two of these three character-

istics.

 

A STUDY OF VARIABLES ASSOCIATED WITH SEPARATION
ANXIETY.AT A SUMMER CAMP

by

Howard Green and Valerie Garstin

A RESEARCH PROJECT

Submitted to
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF SOCIAL'WORK

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK

1967

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
Introduction............................................ 1
Overview of Study Design................................ 6
Sample.................................................. 7
Measurements............................................ 9
Results................................................. 10
Conclusions and Recommendations......................... 12

Demographic Characteristics of Sample by Criteria

GroupSOOOOOOOCO'QCOOCOOOOOOOCOOOOOOIOUOOOOO0......0.... 15

Psychological Characteristics of Sample by Criteria

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iv

LIST OF TABLES

Page
Demographic Characteristics of Sample by Criteria
GroupaflOOOOCOOOOOOIOOCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 15
Psychological Characteristics of Sample by Criteria
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A STUDY OF VARIABLES ASSOCIATED‘WITH SEPARATION
ANXIETYHAT.A SUMMER CAMP

Separation anxiety usually is discussed as an inter-
related variable in the expression of overt manifestations,
such as: phobias, adjustment reactions, anxiety reactions.
conversion reactions. Whatever form the separation anxiety
takes, it has as its center the feature of hostility and
aggression. The fears of what the child would like to do,
and his fear of doing it are said to be a projection onto

the mother.

Bowlby sums up the reaction of the child to separation
succinctly. Speaking specifically of children aged twelve
months to four years, he says that, "All children of this
age, except those who have already suffered considerable
deprivation of maternal care or are seriously ill, react
to the experience with shock and anxiety."1 Bowlby
separates separation anxiety into three phases: protest,

despair and detachment. Protest may last a few’hours to a

 

LBowlby, John, “Grief and.Mourning in Infancy and Early

Childhood,“ ghe Psychoanalytic Studygof The ghilQ,‘Vol. 16,
1960, p. 89.

l

 

week or more. Despair follows protest and the individual
shows increasing helplessness. This in turn is followed
by detachment in which the child appears to have lost all

interest in the mother.

The recreational literature on separation anxiety as
it is related to a summer camp experience, was of limited
value. Several books written for the camp counselor deal
with the subject of "homesickness" but they handle it in a
superficial manner. While these articles and statements
do have some value to untrained staff their use is limited.
Statements are usually based on limited observation and
assertions are rarely supported by evidence. For example,
"Statistics show that homesickness occurs most often with
girls in the eleven to fourteen age range who are having
a first experience away from home."2 There appeared no
bibliography, support or reference of any type to sub-
stantiate statements such as this made in this article and
others like it. In short, if studies and research projects

have been done in an expert and scientific manner we were

 

 

 

2Spiegel, Harry 5 Eleanor, "Start Treatment for Home-
sickness Before Child Comes to Camp", gamping magazine,
June, 1964, p. 20.

unable to find them in a review of primary sources.

One unpublished study reported at a Camping Associa-
tion Convention in Virginia in February of 1967, and
subsequently reported to the authors by Sam Marcus,
Executive Director of Camp Tamarack, Detroit, Michigan,
concluded that there was a direct correlation between a
child's adjustment to camp and his socialization and

swimming ability during the camping season.

Dr. Harmon Putter found that the lower the socio—
economic level of a child, the lower was his adaptation to
camp.3 Newness of the camp experience however, does not
produce a significantly different degree of adaptation to
camp than that found with a prior experience. Sex did
not appear to make a difference. No significant differ-
ence was found between children coming from broken and

unbroken homes. Age difference did not have an influence

on the adaptation to camp.

There are several possibilities for the lack of

 

3Putter, 11.. "Adaptation and Resident Camping”,
lgurnal of gewish Communal Service, Vol. XLIII, No. 3,

 

 

 

professional studies and research on this topic in rela-
tion to summer camping: they were not done; this subject
was covered as an issue under larger studies ~~ thereby
just being listed as a factor taken into consideration or
one of significance: case-workers in a summer camp are a
fairly recent phenomenon; the short duration of stay a
child experiences at a summer camp coupled.with a closing—
down of the facility for a ten month period does not lend
itself to systematic and in-depth research. Furthermore
face sheet or case history information is usually super-
ficial and lacking in any depth: staff usually profession—

ally untrained.

The literature available deals primarily with the
handling of "homesickness" once it becomes evident in the
child. This appears in many ways to be, as the old cliche
states, "locking the barn after the horse has been stolen.”
No literature was found which deals with the.characteristics
of the child who tends to become homesick and.which would
predict that symptom at the time of acceptance for camp.
Usually identification waits until the counselor comes
dashing up and proclaims that the child is crying hysterically,

has just run away, etc., and is suffering from an acute case

of separation anxiety.

There are limitations, then, within the general lack
of research available on homesickness at camp, prediction
of which children will become homesick, what traits they
will show in advance and treatment that can be initiated
with these children with pre-recognition determined upon
a scientific, diagnostic basis is simply not possible at

present to any satisfactory degree.

The senior author, a caseworker in a summer camp for
two years, had noted several characteristics of separation
anxiety in this setting. Except for a few children, it
seems to occur within between thirty-six and seventy two
hours after the child's arrival at camp. It is not always
the child who is away from home for the first time. Some
children show no overt signs during the first year at camp
but develop it during the second or third year. It is
contagious and seems to spread from child to child, from
group to group once started. The degree depends upon the
particular strength or weakness of the child's counselor.
The children show separation anxiety in a variety of ways,

such as: poor appetite or ravenous appetite, cryingr upset

 

   

stomach, fighting, complete withdrawal, crying out to
parents for help, manipulation of parents by producing
guilt through letters, dependence upon counselor or complete
isolation from him and other people. About one child in
four showed separation anxiety in a manner directly obvi-

ous to the staff.

It appeared that if the etiology of separation anxi—
ety and/or variables which would predict occurance with
some accuracy could be identified that both staff and
child could‘work through this period more effectively
and that reduction or removal of the anxiety could be
effected. Therefore the study reported here was carried

out.

derview of Study Design

The basic plan for this study was to collect data
from camper information sheets filled out by the parents,
counselor evaluation sheets of the campers, and records
of the caseworker (where available) for two samples of
children. One consisted of seventy five children who
attended camp during the summer of 1965 and 1966 and

showed separation anxiety. The second group were seventy

five children showing no separation anxiety. These
groups were used to explore retroactively the possibility
that variables which predispose a child to separation
anxiety could be isolated. However, information regarding
children prior to their arrival at camp was only available
in limited amounts, submitted by the parents. This study,
therefore, was not likely to provide a sound basis for
predicting separation anxiety prior to the children's
arrival at camp. It could however determine (1) whether
there were any objective variables which might predispose
a Child to separation anxiety and which were easily
available such as, Marital Status of the parents and (2)
whether there were variables which could be used soon

after arrival to predict occurance of the symptoms.

§ample

One hundred and fifty children in a Jewish Summer
Camp for nineteen day periods were the primary study
subjects. Seventy five of these children showed separation
anxiety while at can; and seventy five did not. The
responses to separation anxiety were subject to interven-

tion by the staff, prior to its outward expression if it

were recognized. This may have contaminated the samples
to the extent that successful intervention prevented
occurance of the anxiety. However, it was assumed that
there is so little information on when to predict the
phenomena, that the intervention was unlikely to be
effective prior to its overt manifestation. Nevertheless,
the cases in the non-separation anxiety group selected
randomly, may have included a few in which homsickness was

successfully prevented by counsellor intervention.

The only matching requirements used for the groups
were: an approximately equal distribution of age and sex
and that the child be free of known emotional or medical
problems for which he was currently being treated. All
children were of the same ethnic background because of the
religious auspices of the camp. Certainly individual
pathology plays a part in the capacity of each individual
to handle a crisis situation, but attention here was
focused on the significance of non-pathological indicators

leading to evidence of separation anxiety.

Separation anxiety, for the purpose of this design,

was defined as manifesting one or more of the following

symptoms: crying and wanting to go‘home: complaints
about camp for non-justified reasons: eating difficulties:
wanting his mother: running away: making needless trips
to the clinic, failing to go to activities: poor peer or

adult relationships: night fears.

neasurements

Concepts about the process and theory of separation
anxiety derived from the literature were used as a guide
to select the information collected about each child in
this study. The children were selected from the fifteen
'hundred evaluations available on the basis of those who
showed separation anxiety and those who did not. The
researchers' judgment played a factor in categorization
but it was based on objective indices and inter-judge
reliability was obtained by comparison of judgments over
several cases. Cases were read until seventy-five with
clear cut separation anxiety and seventyvfive who clearly
did not manifest it were selected. The two groups thus
separated —- Group A those showing separation anxiety and
Group B -- those children who did not exhibit separation

anxiety at camp, were then compared accordingtx,empirical

 

 

10

characteristics. The characteristics then selected for
comparison were age, and sex of the child, and marital

status of the parents (married, divorced, widowed, separated).
The child's peer relationships, counselor relationships,
emotional problems, swimming ability, personal hygiene
habits, eating habits, and.whether the child had been at

camp before were also determined.

gesults

Criterion pattern analysis was used to determine if
there were any characteristics common to children showing
separation anxiety as opposed to those not showing separa-
tion anxiety for the four criteria groups male and female
homesick and male and female not homesick.4 Criterion
group 1, campers who were female and homesick, was comprised
of thirty-six campers aged eight to ten years. Criterion
group two was composed of thirty-nine male campers who
were homesick. Criterion group three was composed of
thirty-three female non-homesick children. Criterion group

four was composed of forty-two non—homesick male children.

‘_.___

4Clark, James, griterion Pattern Analysisl A grggram

for the ggg 3600 gomputor,.Mimeographed, 1967.

 

11

This program, a form of pattern analysis,searches responses
or categories to isolate the maximum number of items with
common answers from an inventory of items or characteristics.
Patterns of response are identified which meet a pre-set
minimum discrimination level, in this case sixty percent,
which means that any pattern of response categories had

at least sixty percent, of the cases in the pattern in the
criterion group. In this method, by searching each
criterion group for patterns distinguishing the cases from
all other criterion groups, it is possible to isolate
multiple variables which predict to the criterion under
consideration. Single variables or combinations of variables
are isolated by this technique. Using this method it was
not possible to isolate predictive patterns as can be seen
by tables 1 and 2 pg.15 e 18. Insofar as this study could
determine from the information measured, a child shows no
special characteristics prior to his arrival at camp that
allow the prediction of homesickness or separation anxiety
prior to its expressiOn by the child. There did appear to
be a coerelation between general adjustment to camp and

the child whose parents were together, came from a low

economic status and had good eating habits. The children who

 

12

showed these characteristics whether homesick or not homes
sick, appeared to make a good adjustment to camp and had
a successful camping experience. Although a child might
show homesickness at the beginning of the camping period
this did not preclude that a child could not show a good
adjustment to camp by the end of his stay. Comparisons to
arrive at these conclusions was done by measuring the
frequency of given characteristics against the criteria
groups. For example, poor counsellor and poor eating
showed up as often in criteria groups three and four as
they did in criteria groups one and two. It appeared that
one factor that could not be adequately controlled within
this study was the rating of the children by the counsellors.
Counsellors at this camp are comprised of college students,
the preponderance in their freshman and sephmore year.
Their assessment of the individual child's characteristics
'would produce an individual margin of error. However, for
the purposes of this study all counsellors were considered

as equal in their rating abilities.

gonclusions and Regommendations

 

Based upon the limited findings established in this

13

study it must be concluded that there is no way of pre-
dicting homesickness in a child prior to his showing it
once he has arrived at camp. However, from the sample
group it seems that children who have an intact home, low
economic status, and show good table manners will usually
make an ultimately successful adjustment at camp whether
showing homesickness or not. A further study would appear
indicated to assess the predictability of the child's ad-
justment to camp and his ability to have a satisfactory
camp experience. An additional purpose of this future
study might be to resolve the discrepancy in findings
between our study and Dr. Putter‘s within the area of the

5 Dr. Putter's study

socio—economic level of the child.
concluded that the lower the socio-ecoscmic level the poorer
the child's adaptation to camp while our study concluded

the converse of this. Since Dr. Putter's study covered
children from seven to fourteen years of age and our study
'was based on children in the eight to ten year age range,

direct comparisons cannot be made. The question is raised

‘however by both studies regarding the adaptation of the

 

W— if

5
Putter, 8., op. cit.

14

lower socio—economic status child. Any future study

should resolve this discrepancy.

15

TABLE I

DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF SAMPLE
BY’CRITERIA.GROUPS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Demographic Homesick Homesick
Characteristics Female .Male
I II Total
Sex HQ , 5 HQ , 1
Male 39
Female 36 75
Age
8 yrs. ll 31 ll 28 22 29
9 yrs. 14 39 19 49 33 44
10 yrs. 11 31 9 23 20 27
Marital Status
of Parents
Together 33 92 33 85 66 88
{Apart 3 8 6 15 9 12
.At Camp Before
Yes 14 39 18 46 32 43
No 22 61 21 54 43 57
Economic Status
Good 33 92 32 82 65 87
Poor 3 8 7 18 10 13

 

TABLE I (continued)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Demographic Nonpuomesick Non-Homesick
Characteristics Female Male
III Iv Total 94
Sex NO 0 X 1-10 9 %
Male ' 42 81
Female 33 69
150
.Age
8 yrs. 5 15 10 24 15 20
9 yrs. 18 55 22 52 40 53
10 yrs. 10 3O 10 24 20 27
Marital Status
of Parents
Together 30 91 36 86 66 88
Apart 3 9 6 l4 9 12
At Camp Before
Yes 15 45 19 45 34 45
No 18 55 23 55 41 55
Economic Status
Good. 27 82 29 69 56 75
Poor 6 18 13 31 19 25

 

17

TABLE 2

PSYCHOLOG ICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SAMPLE
BY CRITERIA GROUPS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Psychological Homesick Homes ick
Characteristics Female Ma lo
I II Total %
Peer Relation- No . No .
sh ips
Good 3 1 86 28 7 2 59 7 9
Poor 5 14 11 28 16 21
Counse llor
Re lationsh ips
Good 27 7 5 3O 77 7 7 6
Poor 9 25 9 23 18 24
Emotional
Problems
- Yes 4 11 8 2 1 12 16
No 32 89 31 7 9 63 84
Hygiene
Good 3 3 92 32 82 65 87
Poor 3 8 7 18 10 13
Eating
Good 31 86 25 64 56 7 5
Poor 5 14 14 36 19 25
Swimming '
Good ‘ 14 39 16 41 30 40
Average 11 31 8 21 19 25
Poor 11 31 15 38 26 35

 

 

18

TABLE 2 (continued)

 

 

_.__
v.— r—

w—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Psychological NonPHomesick Non-Homesick
Characteristics Female Male
III IV Total ‘%
Peer Re lation- yo . fi :19 . 1‘
ships
Good 28 85 37 88 65 87
Poor 5 15 5 12 10 13
Counsellor
Relationships
Good 28 85 35 83 63 84
Poor 5 15 7 17 12 16
Emotional
PrOblems
Yes 5 15 6 14 11 15
No 28 85 36 86 64 85
Hygiene
Good 29 88 35 83 64 85
Poor 4 12 7 17 ll 15
Eating
Good 28 85 32 76 60 80
Poor 5 15 10 24 15 20
Swimming
Good 11 33 15 36 26 35
Average 7 21 7 17 14 19
Poor 11 31 15 38 26 35

 

 

 

10.

11.

12.

REFERENCES

.Arieti, Silvano, Amerigan_gandbook of Psychiatgy,
Basic Books, Inc., New York, 1959, Vol. 1 and 2.

Beker, Jerry, graining Qamp gounselors in Human
_gglations -:_A Case Book, Association Press, New
York, 1962.

Bender, Laurelta. Agapession, gostility and.Apxiety
in thldrep, Charles Thomas, Inc., Chicago, 1953.

Bentley, Welter, grass Tacks for Counselors, waiter
Bentley Boston, 1940.

Biestek, Felix,'ghe Casework Relationship, Loyola
University Press, Chicago, 1957.

Berg, Belle, Psycholggy in Children's Camp, Vantage
Press, New York, 1958.

Bowlby, John, "Grief and Mourning In Infancy and
Early Childhood,"‘ghe Psychoanalyticfgtudy of the
ghild, Vol. 16, 1960.

Clark, James, Criterion Pattern Analysisy_A Prggram
for the CDC 3600 Computor, Mimeographed, 1967.

Drought, R., A Qamping Manual, A.S. Barnesie Co.,
New*York, 1943.

Frankiel, Rita, A_Review of Research on Parent Influ-
ences on Child Personality, Family Service Assoc. of
America, New York, 1959.

Herink, Reinhard, gollege Level statistics, Monarch
Press, Inc., New York, 1965.

Levy, Charles, "Guilt and.Homesickness in Camp,"
‘ggurnal of_ghild Psychiatry, Vol. 2, 1952.

19

 

 

14

15

17

13.

14.

17.

20

Littner. Nor. WM

Placement, Family Service Assoc. of America, New
York, 1956.

Matek, 0rd, ”Differential Diagnosis for Differential

Placement of Children,” Child flelfare, Vol. XLIII,
No. 7, July, 1964. .

Mitchell, A., Crawford, Ida, camp counselling, Third
Edit., W.B. Saunders, Philadelphia, Sept., 1964.

Puttern, H., ”Adaptation and Resident Camping," Joggna;

9; Jewish gommung; service, Vol. XLIII, No. 3. spring

1967 .

Spiegel, Jerry & Eleanor, "Start Treatment for Home-

sickness Before Child Comes to Camp," gamping Magazine,
June, 1964.

 

 

 

 

mum; WW1 mm

 

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