This study involved the identification and explication of a typology of adolescents' leisure functioning, based on a state of mind definition of leisure. Subjects included 200 students from a junior high school in the midwest who completed the Leisure Diagnostic Battery (LDB) during a study hall. Procedures involved the application of two methods of cluster analysis to profiles of scores across the five LDB scales which are designed to measure perceived freedom in leisure. Following this process of identification and validation of the "types," the relationship between group membership and various barriers to leisure were examined through multiple discriminant analysis. Finally, between type differences on three preferred style of participation in recreation activity variables (active/passive, individual/ group, and risk/nonrisk) were examined through the analysis of variance.

This study examined the contribution of several variables to the prediction of perceived freedom in leisure (PFL) and life satisfaction in older adults. Demographic, health and socioeconomic variables were compared with participation in recreation programs, church involvement and PFL. Church involvement was viewed as a leisure activity rather than a measure of religiosity. The survey instrument incorporated all these variables and was pretested and revised before use in the study. The sample consisted of 198 persons 60 years of age and older who were members of two Southern Baptist churches. Subjects were randomly selected, but persons considered by church staff members to be incapable of completing the survey were eliminated. Surveys were hand delivered and picked up by volunteer workers, and a 38 percent return rate was obtained. Alpha reliability for the church involvement, PFL and life satisfaction scales in the instrument were .87, .94, and .77, respectively. Frequency counts and percentages or means and standard deviations were calculated for the demographic variables. Subjects were categorized by level of involvement in church and community recreation programs. Persons involved in community but not church recreation programs were underrepresented in the sample. A selective sampling procedure was utilized to obtain more respondents in this category, but the data from these individuals were analyzed separately. Stepwise multiple regression analyses were utilized to ascertain the impact of different variables upon PFL and life satisfaction. Three predictors of PFL emerged— participation in recreation programs, church involvement and satisfaction with health. Correlations between these variables and life satisfaction were consistent with the findings in the literature. Inclusion of church involvement, participation in recreation programs and, for the life satisfaction analysis, PFL raised the percentage of variance explained. Thus, greater predictive power emerged using these variables than when only demographic, health and socioeconomic variables were included.

Forty spinal cord injury (SCI) patients were studied in order to determine the effects of an attribution based therapeutic recreation program on their perception of freedom in leisure. Perception of freedom in leisure of SCI patients was measured by a seventy-two item scale. This scale was translated into Spanish, adapted, revised, validated, and tested for reliability. The reliability of the Spanish Version of the scale was very similar to the English Version of the scale.