engleski

“What are You doing?”: Comparison of three methodological approaches to studying leisure

Work or school occupy many hours a day, but still a significant amount of time can be considered as free time. Conspicuous variability in free time activities makes it hard to research, showing the need for combining several methods. The aim of this research was to examine activities in free time with three different methods: free time checklist, favorite activity and experience sampling methodology. 769 students participated in checklist and favorite activity study (mean age 20.57), and 121 students participated in the experience sampling study (mean age 21.62). Different methodological approaches to free time activities scrutiny showed clear differences in their occurrences. Favorite activities were dominantly marked by achievement leisure, with undervalue of activities related to entertainment and social leisure. Experience sampling study showed supremacy of entertainment and social leisure, as well as occurrences of activities related to house and personal maintenance. Estimating leisure activities through checklist indicated high occurrences of reading and low of entertainment leisure activities, which is opposite to the findings obtained by activity sampling. The differences among methodological approaches possibly indicate that the research focus should dictate the choice of the most appropriate methodological approach. Moreover, those differences might point to the fact that self-assessment of leisure activities is biased. At least in part, this could be circumvented by a multimethod approach.

free time ; leisure ; checklist ; favorite activity ; experience sampling

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