Enhancing the Accessibility and Visibility of Leisure Research

Abstract

The articles by Jordan and Roland and by Samdahl and Kelly encourage us, as leisure researchers, to step back and examine relevance of our research and role of journals and periodicals in disseminating this research. The main conclusion arising from Jordan and Roland paper is that very few practitioners and academic researchers read research journals. This certainly appears to be true for practitioners, but majority of academic researchers did report reading Journal of Leisure Research (JLR) or Leisure Sciences (LS) at least sometimes (see Jordan and Roland: Table 1). Jordan and Roland found fairly strong agreement from both practitioners and academic researchers that published articles should have some applicability to practice of profession and that all research articles should include a section about implications for practice. Very few respondents felt that research articles are easily understood or applied by practitioners. Should these findings cause JLR to reassess its approach to dissemination of leisure and recreation research? As with any type of publication, journals need to identify an appropriate niche in which to meet needs of a defined readership. JLR has traditionally functioned as a theory-based scholarly publication meeting prescribed academic standards. This represents a valid and valuable niche in spectrum of leisure and recreation publications, and is complementary to roles of other journals and periodicals that locate themselves at various points along theoretical-- applied dimension, some with specific mandates to bridge gap between empirical research and practical application. There are also alternative forums in which published research from academic journals may be disseminated to recreation practitioners. The fact that practitioners may not read journals such as JLR does not mean, as Jordan and Roland suggest, the existence of a non-influential body of research Publications or features are often designed specifically to convey relevant research findings to practitioners. Examples of these include Research Update section of Parks and Recreation and Look at Leisure bulletin of Alberta Recreation and Parks. Furthermore, educational seminars and presentations for a practitioner audience often draw on empirical findings, providing contextual and trend information that may ultimately be more beneficial to practitioners than conclusions from discrete published articles. Nevertheless, findings of Jordan and Roland should focus our attention on continuing need for dialogue between practitioners and academic researchers to ensure that practitioners are aware of significant developments in leisure literature and that researchers are making some attempt to address key concerns of practitioners. Although there is a role for theoretically-based journals, there are opportunities for these journals to provide more practitioner-friendly features such as review articles that summarize key findings and trends in specific topic areas and address their implications for practice. Samdahl and Kelly, in their analysis of publication citations, have provided a valuable overview of broad field of leisure and recreation research and have raised some challenging issues with regard to crossfertilization of leisure research with other relevant bodies of literature. They report that articles in JLR and LS represent less than ten percent of currently published leisure and recreation research. …