Leisure Activities, Health and the Quality of Life

Abstract

The aim of this investigation was to measure the mutual influence of people’s leisure time activities on their overall health or well-being, and to explain the impact of such activities and health on the perceived quality of people’s lives. Four hundred and forty usable questionnaires returned from a mailout random sample of 2,500 households of Prince George, British Columbia in November 1999 formed the working data-set for our analyses. We constructed 13 indexes measuring the degrees to which respondents thought they benefitted in a variety of ways from engaging in leisure time activities, and 4 indexes summarizing the activities respondents actually engaged in during each of the four seasons. Using SF-36 to assess respondents’ health, we showed that there was little change in the overall health of residents of this community over the past year, and that there were indeed significant positive correlations between every one of the 8 dimensions of health measured by SF-36 and several of the indexes of leisure activities. The Fall and Winter Physical Activities index was positively related to 6 of the 8 SF-36 dimensions and the Spring and Summer Physical Activities index was positively related to 5. The two Sedentary Activities indexes were unrelated to any dimension of SF-36. Satisfaction levels for 7 of 15 specific domains of life and for life as a whole were lower in 1999 than in 1997, but there were no statistically significant differences in the other 8 domains, happiness or satisfaction with the overall quality of life. Multivariate regression analysis showed that 4 health dimensions could explain 37% of the variance in reported life satisfaction, 2 leisure benefits indexes could explain 24%, 6 domain satisfaction scores could explain 62%, a combination of one health dimension and 5 domain satisfaction scores could explain 64%, and a combination of all potential predictors could not improve upon the 64% figure. The same sort of analysis showed that one health dimension could explain 22% of the variance in reported happiness, one leisure benefits index could explain 16%, 5 domain satisfaction scores could explain 42%, a combination of one health dimension and 4 domain satisfaction scores could still only explain 42%, and a combination of all potential predictors could not improve upon that figure. Finally, the same sort of analysis showed that 2 health dimensions could explain 29% of the variance in reported satisfaction with the overall quality of life, 3 leisure benefits indexes could explain 23%, 8 domain satisfaction scores could explain 64%, a combination of one health dimension and 8 domain satisfaction scores could explain 65%, and a combination of all potential predictors could not improve upon the 65% figure.

The authors would like to thank Tom Madden, Elaine Kalke, Shelley Rennick, George Paul and Irene Huse for their help in preparing this research project.