Measuring Leisure Attitude

Abstract

Knowledge on leisure and recreation behavior was reviewed to extract indicators relevant to the construct leisure attitudes. That created a pool of over 100 indicators which were reduced and used to develop a tentative measure of 55 items. Items were related to three components of leisure attitudes: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. The instrument was subjected to three pilot studies. The first was in face-to-face situations with about 30 subjects. After refining the instrument, it was administered to a sample of 155 subjects. Some items required modifications and some others needed to be eliminated. Then, the new version was administered to a sample of 254 subjects. This yielded an alpha reliability coefficient of.94 for the total scale. A final test and two other leisure attitude scales were administered to a sample of 1,042 subjects to test concurrent validity; Crandall and Slivken (1980), and Burdge (1961). The results showed the following alpha reliability coefficients: Total Scale =.94, Cognitive =.91, Affective =.93, and Behavioral =.89. The instrument was sent to 31 experts in the areas of leisure attitude and social psychology to be evaluated for content validity. Their responses generally confirmed the appropriateness of the items.