An examination of adolescents' attitudes towards leisure activities

The aim of this study was to examine the attitudes level towards leisure activities of adolescents and to compare the participants' attitudes levels according to some variables. 610 (Nmale= 333; Mage= 15.80, SD= 1.14 and Nfemale= 277; Mage= 15.66, SD= 1.01) adolescents enrolled in this study from different high schools in Turkey. The Leisure Attitude Scale (LAS) (Ragheb and Beard, 1982) was administered on the participants. Cognitive, affective and behavioral items (12 per type) were rated on a five-point Likert scale. Descriptive statistical methods and MANOVA were used to compare the differential scores of the three sub-scales of the T-LAS among the demographic variables. Correlation analysis was used to test the relationship between T-LAS sub-scales and age. The cognitive sub-scale scores were the highest toward leisure. MANOVA analysis indicated no significant mean differences in all three sub-scales with regard to gender. However, there were no significant main effect of participation in physical activity on “T-LAS” scores; a follow-up univariate analysis indicated significant main effects for participation in physical activity on the sub-scales of “Cognitive”, “Affective”, “Behavioral”. Participants groups had higher mean attitude scores than the non-participants in all sub-scales of T-LAS. Additionally, MANOVA indicated significant main effect of school type on “T-LAS” scores, in tests between subject effects by school type, results also revealed a significant differences in the “Cognitive”, “Affective”, “Behavioral” sub-scales. Private high schools’ students had higher scores than the others. Overall, the girl participants had lower attitudes toward leisure than the boys. While the highest leisure attitudes mean score in affective sub-scale, cognitive subscale is the lowest score.