Empirical typologies for leisure participation patterns and socioeconomic characteristics

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to develop and demonstrate an alternative leisure typology formulation process; to formulate leisure typologies and associated socioeconomic characteristics; to test the relationship between respondents' age, income, education, sex, present residence, size of household and the number of leisure factors into which their leisure activities were classified; and to formulate and compare rural and urban residents' leisure typologies. In addition, the study designed a leisure demand projection model to predict what proportion of the population will be redistributed to each leisure typology in 1990. The data used in this study were selected from the Continuous National Survey which was undertaken by the National Opinion Research Center, at the university of Chicago in 1973. The data were obtained from face-to-face interviews conducted in the respondent's home. The sample was chosen through a sampling design constructed to provide a probability sample on a national basis. The leisure typologies were formulated on the basis of assignment of the most appropriate combination of leisure factors. Principal component analysis was used to isolate leisure factors. The leisure factors were derived from activities sharing the same common factor variance. The final stage of the typology formulation process was to identify core typologies. A decision rule was adopted to disregard those typologies which contained fewer than 5 respondents. After this rule had been implemented, 17 typologies remained and these constituted the core typologies. Each leisure typology was described by a unique combination of socioeconomic characteristics. No single socioeconomic variable could discriminate among all leisure typologies.