Taken together, the two articles (Jordan & Roland [JR Samdahl & Kelly [S&K]) present a sobering picture as to the contribution made by leisure researchers. Given the limited amount of space, I will not reiterate the points made by the authors. Rather, I will look at the issue from a somewhat broader perspective that addresses how leisure might be made more attractive to a broader audience. Any discussion of the impact of a body of literature should begin with a discussion of the most prevalent journals in the field. As per S&K, my focus will be on Leisure Sciences (LS) and the Journal of Leisure Research (JLR). A review of the missions of each journal suggests that the study of leisure is interdisciplinary in nature and intended for an audience that includes both academics and practitioners. Interestingly this perspective has not changed very much over the past two decades. In a review of leisure and recreation as a scholarly topic between 1972 and 1982, Rabel Burdge (1983) commented that the study of leisure requires a multidisciplinary orientation. Practical application of findings is seen as the desired end product of leisure research (p. 104). Thus, it comes as no surprise that formal inquiry into the leisure phenomenon has been studied from a number of different social science perspectives including anthropology, geography, sociology, economics, and psychology. Consistent with the mission statements, therefore, the study of leisure represents an applied discipline in two ways. First, it represents a context in which theories and methods from other core disciplines might be applied. Second, information produced from the can also be applied to real world settings, although J&R's article suggests that practitioners have very little use for or interest in this (see also Parr, 1996). I would like to begin my comments by discussing the audience for these journals. One way the academic/practitioner distinction might be clarified is by applying a conceptual framework developed by Brinberg and McGrath (1985) who outlined three broad domains of validity in research: conceptual, methodological, and substantive. Each domain is further differentiated into relations, elements, and embedding systems. For example, conceptual elements are properties of actors behaving a given context (e.g., beliefs, attitudes, involvement) and relations are the connections between properties (e.g., attitudes predict intentions in Ajzen and Fishbein's [1975] Theory of Reasoned Action). The methodological domain provides researchers with the tools to assess relations among variables. The substantive domain is represented by actors behaving in some real world context or setting (e.g., campers, camp directors). Relations, in this case, are the pattern of events that occur within the context (e.g., the interaction of the camp director with camDers) . In the traditional experimental paradigm (i.e., academic orientation), a researcher first selects elements and relations from the conceptual domain, then goes to the methodological domain to design the study and test relations, and then selects a substantive domain in which to conduct the research. The specific substantive domain is often selected on the basis of convenience. Tinsley (1997) alluded to this point in a recent LScommentary: As a psychologist, I am much less interested in the nature of the activity (e.g., volleyball or picnicking) than I am in the effects of participation in the activity on the individual, the conditions necessary for those effects to occur, and the lasting consequences or benefits of those effects (p. 293). In contrast, a strict empirical approach (i.e., practitioner orientation) begins with a researcher selecting elements and relations from the substantive domain, drawing upon the methodological domain to develop a set of observations, and then using the conceptual domain as a basis for interpreting the observations. …