Generalizability of the Leisure Diagnostic Battery
The Leisure Diagnostic Battery exists as one of the few validated assessment procedures in therapeutic recreation. It was developed by Peter Witt and his colleagues in 1982 to measure perceived freedom in youth (ages 7 to 14). The Battery consists of five diagnostic scales intended to measure perceived freedom and three remediation scales designed to provide direction in individualized therapeutic recreation and leisure education programs. This study attempted to validate the diagnostic scales and one of the remediation scales on a sample of young adults (N = 513). It was hypothesized that the validation on the young adult sample would generate acceptable estimates of reliability, substantiate the theoretical structure of the diagnostic scales, and the Barriers to Leisure Involvement scale would be inversely related to the perceived freedom construct measured by the diagnostic scales. Test-retest reliability estimates and Cronbach's alpha were calculated on each of the scales and the diagnostic battery. All reliability estimates exceeded.53 and were deemed acceptable. To demonstrate construct validity the data was subjected to inter-item correlations, item-total correlations, and principal-components analysis. In addition, an analysis of covariance structures was applied to the data and six factors were extracted from both an orthogonal and oblique rotation. These analyses resulted in a factor structure which partially resembled the scale structure of the Leisure Diagnostic Battery. Only one scale emerged as a unique factor, Perceived Leisure Competence. Items from other scales clustered in factors related to the concepts of social play, resourcefulness, humor and excitement, a combination of depth of involvement and leisure needs and barriers of time and money. Regression analyses were performed on the data and it was determined that eight common demographic variables had little effect on the scale scores. These results support the use of the Leisure Diagnostic Battery as an indicator of perceived freedom in leisure but suggest care in using individual scale scores for decisions in designing individual program plans in therapeutic recreation. Further recommendations include a re-examination and possible restructuring of the Leisure Diagnostic Battery and further research into the definition of the elements of perceived freedom.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign