The current research was conducted using a quasi-experimental method and a sample of 456 incoming college students at a selective, mid-western Protestant, evangelical liberal arts college. The treatment group consisted of 215 incoming students who choose to participate in an optional ABOP prior to the beginning of regular orientation. The control group consisted of the remaining 480 first-year students and transfers whom did not participate in the ABOP. Of the 695 potential students, 168 ABOP and 287 non-ABOP students had completed both pre-test and post-test surveys providing a response rate of 65.6%. The sample was largely Caucasian (82.9%), was gender weighted (56.6% female), averaged 18.29 years old, and came largely from original two-parent homes (93.4%). All students in the sample completed a pre-test and post-test using three identity instruments: Ego Identity Process Questionnaire (alpha = 0.60, 0.72 and 0.81 for subscales), Identity Status Instrument Revised (alpha = 0.64, 0.52 to 0.74 for subscales), and the Multiagentic Personality Survey (alpha = 0.73 to 0.70 on pre-test and post-test respectively). The post-test also included the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (alpha = 0.94), 18 researcher developed demographic and life experience items, and 16 researcher developed questions on spiritual identity. The identity instruments were chosen because they represented the three different aspects of identity formation that were prominent in the social science literature and seemed relevant to today's emerging adults: identity status (Marcia, 1966), identity styles (Berzonsky, 1989) and identity capital resources (Cote and Levine, 2002). Schwartz (2002) called for use of multiple identity measures to get a clear picture of identity formation. The SACQ (Baker and Siryk, 1984) was used because it is one of the leading instruments for measuring adaptation to college and has four scales: academic adjustment, social adjustment, personal/emotional adjustment, and attachment to institution. This study explored whether involvement in adventure-based orientation programs affected adaptation to college and identity formation. It also investigated the impact of several prominent measures of identity formation on adaptation to college. The primary conclusion is that ABOP involvement does significantly improve adaptation to college especially in the social adjustment and attachment to institution domains. It also demonstrated that ABOP involvement did not accelerate the amount of development or change in most measures of identity formation. Finally, it showed that multiple types of identity formation (identity status exploration; informational and normative identity styles; and agentic personality characteristics) result in higher levels of adaptation to college in most domains of adaptation. In most cases the effect sizes were weak or small to medium. Limitations of the study, suggestions for future research, and recommendations for educational practice are included. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]