Leisure structure, value orientations and health behavior among high school students

The main goal of the present study was to determine the relationship between youths' leisure activities and their health attitudes. The author also aimed at investigating the connections between the youths' leisure activities and their parents' social background. In addition, she also tried to detect possible relationships between young people's pastime and their value orientations, such as materialism, and their levels of satisfaction with life. Data were collected from students enrolled in the secondary schools of the Southern Plain Region (three counties, namely, Bacs-Kiskun, Bekes and Csongrad) of Hungary. This representative sample consisted of 1114 high school students aged between 14-21 years. Self-administered questionnaires were used to obtain information from students regarding their family structure, psychosocial health, value orientations, satisfaction with life and socio-demographics. Correlation and multiple regression analyses revealed that youths' leisure time activities were related to other elements of their lifestyle such as value orientations and health attitudes. Social status indicators, however, were a more important influence on their leisure as compared to their Western-European counterparts