Healthy and meaningful leisure behaviour of young adults as a multisectoral challenge

Introduction: In the leisure sector our society is confronted with permanent changes.
Actual challenges are forcing voluntary activities, handling with new types of media
and using free time wisely. According to the Social Model of Health by Dahlgren &
Whitehead (1991) leisure-time activities have an important influence on adolescent
health.
Objectives: The aims of the empirical study were to quantitatively analyse leisuretime
activites of youngsters comprehensively (e.g. influencing factors, motives,
health consequences, satisfaction, identity formation) and to identify need for action.
Methods: In 2012 the FH Burgenland carried out a standardized online survey
concerning leisure behaviour of young Austrians between the age of 11 and 17 (n =
461). The questionnaire was distributed among adolescents by virtual social
networks.
Results: Favourite activites of Austrian adolescents are listening to music, surfing the
internet and meeting friends. Sex, age and relationship with parents strongly
correlate with choice of hobbies. Some activites like doing sports have a positive
influence while others like playing computer games have a negative influence on selfreported
health. 32% of adolescents are dissatisfied with their leisure time. Reasons
are little free time because of school as well as missing sense of purpose and little
social contacts.
Conclusions: Austrian adolescents wish to have more leisure opportunities, meetingpoints
and less school stress. In future based on these results concrete political
suggestions should be developed in order to enable adolescents a healthy and
meaningful leisure behaviour. The education sector plays a vital role in that context.
Nevertheless it is necessary that all relevant sectors and organizations (schools, communities, (sport) clubs, health promotion organizations, youth work) work
together. Possible actions – in which adolescents have to be integrated – are
establishing leisure-time facilities and youth clubs.