Boredom in Free Time: Relationships with Personality, Affect, and Motivation for Different Gender, Racial and Ethnic Student Groups

Abstract

The propensity to experience boredom in free time was investigated by exploring relationships with the individual's demographic characteristics, personality, motivational orientation, and affective style assessed through group-administered questionnaires to 999 university students. The self-as-entertainment personality attribute consistently predicted the likelihood that students would be bored, and inverse relationships with extraversion and intrinsic motivational orientation were found for all student groups. Multiple regression analyses revealed that race, ethnicity, and gender were the only significant demographic predictors of the likelihood an individual would be bored in free time. Group similarities and differences in depicting students who were prone to experience boredom in free time are described.

Leisure boredom and adolescent risk behaviour: a systematic literature review

“…Females in South Africa (Wegner et al 2006) and in rural areas of Australia (Patterson et al 2000) experienced higher levels of boredom than boys. Gender significantly moderated relationships between individual characteristics and boredom in free time (Barnett and Klitzing 2006). Other studies found that males reported higher boredom (Shaw et al 1996) and were more prone to boredom (Newberry and Duncan 2001) than females.…”

“…A description of the study samples, measurements and variables is given in Appendix 1. The majority of the studies were conducted in the developed world, with 16 studies from the USA (Barnett 2005, Barnett and Klitzing 2006, Caldwell et al 1999, Caldwell and Kivel 1998, Caldwell and Smith 1995, Iso-Ahola and Crowley 1991, Iso-Ahola and Weissinger 1990, Larson and Richards 1991, Newberry and Duncan 2001, Sharp et al 2006, Weissinger, Caldwell and Bandolas 1992, Widmer, Ellis and Munson 2003, Widmer, Ellis and Trunnell 1996, Yang and Yoh 2005. Two studies were from Canada Weissinger 1992, Shaw, Caldwell andKleiber 1996) and three studies were from Australia (Farnworth 1998, Gordon and Caltabiano 1996, Patterson, Pegg and Dobson-Patterson 2000.…”

“…Six study samples involved college or university students (Barnett 2005, Barnett and Klitzing 2006, Patterson et al 2000, Iso-Ahola and Weissinger 1990, Yang and Yoh 2005. Five studies included special groups of youth such as those identi-fied as high-risk and criminal offenders on probation (Farnworth 1998), and those attending substance use centres (Iso-Ahola and Crowley 1991), detention centres (Widmer et al 1996) and psychiatric treatment centres (Widmer et al 2003).…”

“…Six studies included students who were enrolled in specific classes (Gordon andCaltabiano 1996, Iso-Ahola andWeissinger 1990;Patterson et al 2000, Shaw et al 1996, Widmer et al 1996; thus providing samples that were not strictly random in nature. Four studies made use of voluntary sampling (Barnett 2005, Barnett and Klitzing 2006, Caldwell et al 1999, Newberry and Duncan 2001, which may have introduced a degree of bias into the studies. Four studies used non-probability sampling based on the availability of respondents , Farnworth 1998, Iso-Ahola and Crowley 1991, Yang and Yoh 2005.…”

The effects of motivation on leisure time management

“…Kinnaird (1994), Annett et al (1995), Thapa et al (2004), Papadakis et al (2004), Johnson et al (2001), Barnett and Klitzing (2006) and Todd et al (2001) stated in their studies that gender has an effect on motivation. The users of Goksu Park are mostly male.…”