Keywords

Leisure, boredom, delinquency, free time

Abstract

Adolescents today have more unsupervised and unstructured free time than ever before. Poor decisions by youth during periods of free time may lead to substance abuse, teen pregnancy and juvenile delinquency. The highest frequency of juvenile crime, a major social problem, occurs during the 2-4 hours following the end of the school day. Research has demonstrated the benefits of engaging adolecents in prosocial leisure activity. However, no research has studied the issues of free time and leisure education with a delinquent population. This paper documents the impact of a leisure education curriculum on a population of delinquent youth in a randomized experiment. The delinquent youths who received the leisure education reported higher intrinsic motivation and better use of free time. The delinquent youths also reported improved decision making related to their involvement in healthy, prosocial free time activities. Finally, the improvement in the delinquent youths' motivation influenced a significant decrease in the delinquent youths' proneness to boredom during their free time.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2006

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Wan, Thomas T. H.

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Health and Public Affairs

Department

Criminal Justice and Legal Studies

Degree Program

Public Affairs

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0001472

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0001472

Language

English

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

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