Leisure Involvement and Alcohol Use of Adolescents

301 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993.The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between adolescents' leisure perceptions, leisure behaviors, and reported alcohol use. The sample consisted of 385 tenth and eleventh grade students of a semi-rural suburban community situated in the midwestern United States. Students completed a survey which included alcohol use items contained in the American Drug and Alcohol Survey. A modified Kelly Leisure Activity Scale was used to assess students' involvement in specific leisure related activities, in terms of level of participation in the activities and level of importance associated with each activity. The Leisure Experience Battery for Adolescents (Caldwell, Smith and Weissinger, 1992) was used to assess specific perceptions related to leisure involvement. A specific issue examined in this study was whether involvement in enjoyable interactive leisure with family members is related to adolescents' level of alcohol use. A six item scale was developed to assess students' perceptions of their involvement in family leisure.Based on students' responses to the Kelly Scale items, patterns of response were analyzed through factor analysis, resulting in a 10 factor typology of adolescent leisure involvement. Analysis of variance was conducted to determine whether students reporting different levels of alcohol use varied in their factor scores associated with these ten factors. The results largely support the notion that specific types of leisure involvement are associated with adolescents' level of alcohol use. Nonusers and low level users differed from higher level users in terms of their activity choices as well as the levels of importance they associate with specific types of activities.The results of this study indicate that students' reporting different levels of alcohol use do not vary in their perceptions of boredom, awareness, challenge or anxiety as these constructs relate to their leisure involvement. The results support the premise that adolescents' involvement in interactive leisure activities with family members is associated with a reduced incidence of high level alcohol use. Finally, valuable findings were obtained concerning the contexts of adolescent alcohol use and reasons which adolescents cite for using alcohol.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD