Park Professionals Research Articles

JLR: A Means to Many Ends

The ink was barely dry on the first issue of the Journal of Leisure Research when I arrived in the fall of 1969 at NRPA's Washington, D.C. headquarters at 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue to assume the duties of director of research for the association. A central responsibility of that portfolio was to advance the publication of the new journal. My memories of that early period in the,journal's history, invited here, are in the main quite positive. Association members and staff worked assiduously to assure the Journal's success, an objective certainly achieved, else we would not now be reflecting upon some three decades of quarterly issues. Nevertheless, progress was not without growing pains, arising in part from initial goal incongruity. For JLR began with the optimistic support of a diverse troika: practitioners, researchers, and the association itself. Two of these especially, practitioners and researchers, had very different reasons for supporting the creation of the publication, and quite divergent expectations for its intended contents. Practitioners Historically, recreation and park practitioners were men and women working in the field of public leisure services, most at the local or state level. They were members of several independent professional groups which came together in 1965 to form the National Recreation and Park Association. Branches were formed around the overlapping, yet disparate interests of state park executives, zoo and aquarium leaders (since dissociated from NRPA), therapeutic recreation professionals, military recreation personnel, and educators, the last-named constituting the new Society of Park and Recreation Educators (SPRE). The largest branch by far was composed predominantly of traditional urban-suburban recreation and park professionals. Many acknowledged leaders had reached the pinnacle of their careers in the comparatively tranquil post World War II era with Eisenhower in the White House, and Father Knows Best on grainy black and white television. The sixties introduced many cataclysmic events and trends into this nirvana. One with particular consequence for recreation and park agencies and professionals was the product of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission, a series of volumes, several of which featured lamentations about the dismal state of recreation and park research in America. One outcome of the ORRRC Report was the creation by Congress of the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation in the U.S. Department of the Interior. Beyond counting acres, personnel, dollars, participants, and the like, research was not a part of the world of recreation and park practice. The vast majority of practitioners had no background in college or university programs in recreation and parks; there existed very few such curricula during their formative years. They also had virtually no experience in sponsoring, i.e., paying for research. Nevertheless, in the new dynamic society, research came to be perceived as perhaps a relevant, utilitarian commodity which might offer guidance and solutions to new problems, or at the very least convincing support for current practices. Quite in the abstract, research began to seem useful to their interests, and a good idea. Because of this changing environment and perspective, practitioners evolved into supporters of the plan to have NRPA publish a new research journal. As competition grew for increasingly scarce public funds, they hoped this journal would define convincingly the benefits of public recreation and park programs and services, and justify persuasively public expenditures for these. In addition, they expected the journal to provide solutions to deeprooted problems and new challenges confronting them. They agreed it should be an integral part of all professional memberships in the association Researchers In part as a result of some labor studies ostensibly projecting a shortage of qualified leisure personnel in the U. …