Thickening serious leisure: a review of studies that employed the Serious Leisure Inventory and Measure (SLIM) between 2008 and 2019

Abstract

ABSTRACT Gould et al.’s (2008) Serious Leisure Inventory and Measure (SLIM) and its short version were widely used to quantify dimensions of serious leisure for more than a decade. The purpose of this paper is to inform future research directions by reviewing studies employed SLIM to identify diverse SLIM practices and summarise present research findings. A total of 34 journal articles published in English between 2008 and 2019 were reviewed. Results revealed a large variety of applications of SLIM. Of the 34 studies examined, ten studies used SLIM scores to classify participants into groups using researcher-determined criteria or cluster-related analytical approaches; 24 studies explored individual characteristics, activity experiences, or life outcomes associated with variables derived from SLIM. The results provided insights of selecting between original and short SLIM. Additionally, while studies employed SLIM have supported how serious leisure contributes to leisure experience and life outcomes, some other areas would benefit from future research, including more efforts on understanding individual characteristics associated with the process of becoming serious, negative aspects of serious leisure and its impact on participants’ activity engagement, and overall life experience.