The purpose of this study was to examine how much adolescents enjoyed leisure activities and what factors interfered with their leisure life to lay a foundation for more successful leisure education. The subjects in this study were 195 mentally retard...
The purpose of this study was to examine how much adolescents enjoyed leisure activities and what factors interfered with their leisure life to lay a foundation for more successful leisure education. The subjects in this study were 195 mentally retarded students in middle and high school sections from 7 special schools in north Gyeongsang province. After a survey was conducted. the following findings were acquired:
First, as a result of analyzing how they capitalized on their leisure time, the most common type of activity was sightseeing and viewing cultural or art events, followed by sports and hobby/cultural activities in the order named. The type of activities to build human relations, raise cattle or cultivate vegetables wasn't preferred, and they didn't actually have many chances to do this type of things. The weekday leisure time wasn't much utilized, and their leisure life was considered not so satisfactory or totally unsatisfactory. This showed that they weren't satisfied with their leisure activities.
Second, the most largest factor to hinder their leisure activities was social factor, followed by financial and family factors in the order named. And personal factor gave the least impact, and the second least influential one was time factor. The gender made no difference to their perception of obstacles to leisure life, and residential area had significant relationship with their outlook on time and economic factors. And the extent of disability was significantly associated with their view of time factor.
Third, there was high correlation among family, social and financial factors.
The time factor was least correlated.
There are some suggestions in conjunction with the findings of this study:
First, regarding the social factor, the way people look at leisure activities by the disabled should be changed, and simple but enjoyable leisure programs should be developed for mentally retarded people.
Second, the financial factor kept them away from leisure life, and school needs to offer a variety of free leisure programs through club or extracurricular classes. And the disabled should legally be allowed to use social leisure facilities free of charge.
Third, family members should give greater consideration to mentally retarded student’s leisure life. They could spend more time with disabled children through picnic, sightseeing, on-the-spot study, religious activities or participating in social groups. And school should give assignment about weekend picnic, experience activity or sightseeing as a way to encourage family leisure life.