Race and Gender Differences in Adolescent Peer Group Approval of Leisure Activities

Abstract

The leisure preferences of childhood and adolescence have generally been regarded as important to adult leisure behavior. Race has also been shown to affect adult leisure behavior and experience in the United States. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to believe that adult racial differences at leisure have been influenced by adolescent leisure preferences and participation patterns. Unfortunately, past research on adolescent leisure has largely ignored race as an important study variable. This study investigated the relationship between race and gender on adolescent peer group approval of 20 leisure activities common to the study area. A stratified random sample of 421 11th and 12th grade public high school students was drawn from a southern school district, yielding 101 Black and 280 White adolescents who rated leisure activities on perceived peer group approval. Utilizing two-tailed t-tests, with an F (folded) statistic to test for equality of the two variances and a Bonferroni correction for multiple comparison tests, significant differences (p < 0.001) between Black and White adolescents were found for 10 (50%) leisure activities. Race appeared to be a more important factor than gender when comparing peer group approval ratings between the racial groups for most leisure activities on an activity-by-activity level. Black adolescents showed fewer gender differences than Whites at this level of analysis. From a different perspective, when the mean scores were ranked and the association in direction of scores for these leisure activities was tested using Spearman's Correlation, males showed a much stronger association in their ranked scores than females. Selected peer group characteristics of these adolescent racial groups are also presented. The findings suggest that race and gender are defining features of African American adolescent leisure experience with important implications for adult leisure behavior.