This study develops the most efficient predictor sets for the leisure activities of 363 tenth grade teenagers from four high schools in Santa Clara County, California. T h e results indicate that media play a relatioely small part in teenage lives. Interpersonal discussion is a major component of almost all teenage leisure behacior. Different cognitive styles predict different behavior: intelligence correlates highly with print consumption while creativity is strongly associated with non-media pursuits (e.g., clubs and hobbies). Socio-economic oariables are less powerful in prediction equations than the interrelationship of all measured leisure time activities.
As much as 40 percent of the variance is explained in a leisure activity, but ref inemcnt of communication measures, validation of predictive relationshpis, and longitudinal extension of the study design are recommended.For the past fifteen years, the major research emphasis on the use of leisure time by children and adolescents has been concentrated on the role of television. Pioneer studies such as those of Himmelweit et al. (1958) and Schramm et al. (1961) provided comprehensive data on the frequency of media use, program preferences, displacement effects on other media brought about by attention to television, and various descriptive breakdawns of media behavior for different age groups.As part of their update of the earlier descriptive work, Lyle and Hoffman (1972) interviewed 500 tenth grade students in a suburb of Los Angeles regarding their use of television and other media. In general, TV and movies were the major preferred sources of leisure activity for their tenth grade respondents; those media served as frequent conversation topics with friends and family. Television was still perceived as an entertainment medium and it had little displacement effect on other activities if accompanied by reading; when adolescents were heavy TV viewers, and did not read at the same time, then increased amounts of exposure to TV lead to lower levels of participation in clubs, organizations, hobbies and artistic activities. The 1961 findings appear valid today.In addition to description, early studies found intelligence and socioeconomic status the major correlates of TV and print be-
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