The Catalogue of Leisure Activities: A New Structured Values and Content Based Instrument for Leisure Research Usable for Social Development and Community Planning

Abstract

Leisure is a phenomenon that undergoes constant change. These changes are sometimes global, but more often, they are localized. For this reason, the capturing of leisure and leisure activities poses a major challenge for researchers. In particular, they struggle to capture measurements for leisure activities in such a way that these measurement results can be compared over time, in different places, and in different communities. We have therefore identified the need for a tool that makes it possible to compare both time- and place-specific measurements. Based on our long-term research, we have created the Catalogue of Leisure Activities (CaLA), which is built on two pillars—content proximity and value consequences of leisure activities. Therefore, the CaLA allows for the capturing of the complexity of leisure activities and using the data thus measured as variables in statistical hypotheses, longitudinal comparisons of research across locations, over time, and across population groups (e.g., children, adults, etc.). It also allows measurements of other secondary characteristics (e.g., favor rate, duration, etc.) to be linked to the activities found. The results of measuring leisure activities using the CaLA can be used in research as a dependent or independent variable. As a result, we can detect many hitherto hidden relationships that significantly influence leisure experience and its quality. The CaLA also opens up many more possibilities for a wider range of applications in practice, e.g., in counseling, psychology, and coaching in support of individual development, in helping professions, social work and pedagogy when working with students and clients, and among managers when planning the development and maintaining the competitiveness of leisure facilities. Last but not least, the CaLA can be used by community leaders and politicians when designing public policies or developing a sustainable society.

1. Introduction

Leisure is one of the important factors influencing the personal development of individuals [1,2], shaping their social identity [3,4] and influencing the creation of social worlds [3,5], and it is largely a driver for social development in communities [6]. Meaningful leisure time is part of social prevention; therefore, it is the topic of social work, specifically school social work [7]. With the Catalogue of Leisure Activities (CaLA) which we present in this article, we aim to contribute to the possibilities of exploring this increasingly important component of life in contemporary society, offering a tool that will both facilitate basic research and also open up new possibilities for the application sphere.

At the application level, the CaLA can be used both in mapping leisure patterns in a particular area or community in relation to the quality of life [8], and also in planning support in the form of public policies, the distribution of public support and the prevention of social pathologies in vulnerable groups. The CaLA can thus become a tool for community planning, building social cohesion and the sustainable development of society [8,9]. The use of the CaLA can also have further impact in the field of ecology and carbon footprint mapping, as many leisure activities (travel, gastronomy, motor sports, etc.) have a considerable impact on the environment [10,11,12].

2. Literature Review

2.1. Conceptualization and Theoretical Background

Leisure as a part of human life is a complex phenomenon, which has been widely studied and discussed in philosophy [13,14,15,16], cultural anthropology and cultural studies [17,18], psychology [19] and especially in sociology [18]. All these disciplines are focused on specific aspects of leisure, and many particular characteristics of it were recognized within them.

Over the past few decades, leisure and leisure activities have been investigated in many contexts, at different levels and across the breadth of the issue, from the exploration of work-leisure relationship [20,21,22], the leisure functions [23] and context [24], to the impact of information technology and the information society on leisure [25] or the emergence of networked communities [26,27,28]. The influences and impacts of the globalization of leisure, also referred to as the McDonaldization of Society [29] or the somewhat different globalization trend of neat capitalism [30], have also come into the field of view of theorists.

Apart from the transformation of leisure itself, the definition of leisure comes into question again and again. It appears to be a phenomenon, and its perception is changing in society, and, as a result, its definition and boundaries need to be constantly reevaluated. As recently as 1999 Robinson and Godbey [31] listed four types of time, among which they include: paid work (contracted time), household/family care (committed time), personal time and leisure and/or free time, such a clear-cut definition cannot be generally applied today, as the boundaries between the different types of times are blurring. Therefore, in our concept, we are inclined towards a definition that primarily takes into account the aspect of the experience itself and does not seek to define itself in principle in relation to other types of time. Such a definition has been offered, for example, by Max Kaplan:

“Leisure consists of relatively self-determined activity-experience that falls into one’s economically free-time roles, that is seen as leisure by participants, that is psychologically pleasant in anticipation and recollection, that potentially covers the whole range of commitment and intensity, that contains characteristic norms and constraints, and that provides opportunities for recreation, personal growth and service to others.”

[17] (p. 26)

Kaplan’s definition allows us to perceive leisure in a dynamic and above all individualized way. Thus, leisure can often include activities that would not be leisure activities using other definitions. In addition, John Neulinger [32] recognizes the existence of subjective and objective leisure, when the objective leisure is a period of time in which the activities are carried out, and the subjective leisure is the state of mind and it is not necessarily connected to the objective leisure time. It seems to us that objective leisure is precisely defined by Stebbins, who states “leisure may be defined and examined as it fits in the culture and social organization of community and society as it fits in the span of daily, weekly and yearly time and as it fits in the surrounding environment whether artificial or natural.”

[3] (p. 19)

This is substantial for making the distinction between leisure time, activity, and experience. DeGratia [13] states that time and leisure are not the same, as anybody can have free time, but not everybody can have leisure. Hence, we can recognize time connected with leisure as leisure time. Leisure time represents an objective period and is also connected with a physical and social environment, specific material things, and/or social interactions. Within this time and environmental framework, leisure activities are carried out in their objective form.

On the other hand, each leisure activity has its subjective aspect too, which is closely connected with experiencing leisure and has a substantial impact on an individual’s identity. This expression has several qualitative aspects such as level of skills, knowledge and experience, as well as the quality of physical acquisitions and lasting physical products. Stebbins [3] argues that the leisure experience is more specific and deeper in the case of serious and project-based leisure. The adjective “serious” embodies qualities such as earnestness, sincerity, importance, and carefulness. Moreover, he emphasizes that complex leisure activities are an expression of personal identity.

Another term often used with the quality of leisure experience is flow, originally defined by M. Csikszentmihályi [33]. Flow represents an inner expression of subjective leisure and it could be described as a state of mind when the consciousness is in harmony and people wish to achieve the goal just for the goal itself. Leisure activities, especially sports, games, arts, or hobbies can create the flow state. Rheinberg and Engeser [34] showed that the flow is also influenced by the intrinsic motivation of the activity of the participant.

2.2. Leisure Research Problems

Just as leisure is a subject of interest on a theoretical level, a lot of the implemented research also provided important suggestions. However, we have encountered the fact that leisure research instruments are designed for a specific research purpose and cover only a subset of the research domain [35,36,37,38,39].

Other research [40] used already developed instruments [41] to measure the frequency of participation in fifteen leisure activities that are an everyday part of the culture in the country in which the data were collected (Croatia). Leung, Leung and Lam [42] focused on a specific population group and developed a taxonomy to examine the leisure activities of elderly Chinese residents in Hong Kong.

Another approach to examining leisure is to specialize in a methodology for measuring certain aspects or a specific subset of leisure activities, such as Physical Activity and Leisure Motivation Scale (PALMS) [43,44], the Serious Leisure Inventory Measure (SLIM) [45], then to examine the structural validity of SLIM and compare it with another instrument [46]. Additionally, worthy of attention are the methodological approaches that have used the Likert scales to measure leisure [47,48,49] or to compare several leisure measurement techniques [50].

A special group of researchers within leisure research conducted surveys on children and young people and the development of instruments to measure children and young people‘s participation in leisure activities [47,51,52]. To this end, Busetta, Campolo, and Pino [51] used the time-diary method [31,53] in their research on children’s use of time and well-being. Rosenblum, Sachs, and Schreuer [48] developed the Children’s Leisure Assessment Scale (CLASS) instrument, which features 50 major leisure activities that have been aggregated into six dimensions of leisure participation. King, Law, King, Hurley et al. [54] considered construct validity of the Children’s Assessment of Participation and Enjoyment (CAPE) and its companion measure, Preferences for Activities of Children (PAC) for children and young people aged 6 to 21. Within the CAPE leisure activities are divided by children‘s participation in recreation and leisure activities into five dimensions of participation (diversity, intensity, with whom, where and enjoyment).

In addition to the research focusing on the structure and content of leisure activities, many studies are focusing on the benefits of leisure [41,55] and how it is experienced by specific groups [56,57] or in specific situations [58,59]. These studies inspired us to extend our proposed research instrument to include additional dimensions in the form of additional quantitative and qualitative indicators. In our leisure research, we sought a universal tool for quantitative research and the capturing the full range of leisure activities. One of the interesting and universally conceived breakdowns is the Overs et al. classification of leisure activities, which was used empirically, for example, by Tinsley and Eldredge [41]. As a result, these authors have developed a taxonomy of leisure activities that addresses the need-satisfying properties of leisure activities and can help, e.g., in counselling and for psychologists.

There are researchers who are very close to our own thinking and who act as an inspiration for finding a way to group leisure activities using coding. In the works of authors who deal with time spent and day and time, we do not only find non-free-time activities but also free-time activities. All these activities are coded and are grouped into superordinate categories. The author [31] built on the categorization of Szalai [60].

As we have shown above, there are already a number of tools for measuring and classifying leisure time. The described approaches to the measuring of leisure have always been designed with the intention of affecting a specific subset of leisure or leisure in a specific group. The tools described also serve mainly to measure this phenomenon separately and are not sufficiently prepared for use in comprehensively designed research surveys. Across the wide range of leisure research already carried out, we perceive a considerable fragmentation of methodological approaches. We perceive the deficit primarily in the fact that methodological inconsistency does not allow for the comparison of the results of these investigations either horizontally (different studies in different communities or societies) or vertically (tracing the development and changes in the leisure phenomenon in a historical perspective). There is also a lack of or insufficient connections with the application sphere. In particular, we have tried to address these shortcomings by offering a new research tool.

2.3. Leisure and Values

Max Kaplan, in his influential work Leisure: Theory and Policy [17], stated that there exists a circular relationship between leisure and values. The circularity means the relationship between leisure and values is directional and Max Kaplan theorized that this relationship could be influential. In our research, we have been measuring leisure and values since 2007 [61,62,63]. The measured relationship between leisure and values has been confirmed in all our research and we repeated the research in 2007, 2010, 2016, 2018 and 2021 (the COVID-19 pandemic collection). This strong connection and causal influence of these phenomena led us to use values as one of the most important factors influencing the choice of leisure activities and influencing the experiencing of leisure as well.

The concept of “value” has been discussed in philosophy, theology, and social sciences for over 100 years. We consider the thesis, formulated for the first time by philosopher Lotze [64], that values in a human’s life are the key to solving ethical decisions, as well as the building and understanding of culture, which is still valid. During the 20th century many tools for researching values came into existence, and there were many authors devoted to the research of values [65,66,67,68,69,70,71]. In the case of the relationship between leisure and values, we realized the need to measure the relationship between specific individual values and leisure. That is why we looked for a wider instrument to measure values, which allowed us to cover most situations in everyday life. For this purpose, the most suitable option was to use a well-known value itinerary. In our case, we decided to use a slightly adjusted Rokeach’s itineraries of terminal and instrumental values [67].

The original Rokeach’s Value Survey (RVS) contains 18 terminal values and 18 instrumental values [66,67,72]. In his theory, Rokeach divided both terminal and instrumental values into subcategories, which is very useful for determining the value–leisure consequences. Rokeach’ defines terminal values as personal and prosocial values, and in the case of instrumental values he recognizes moral and competence values. [67] Farcane et al. [73] created their own distinction by elaborating on Rokeach’s value subtypes. The basic usage of the itinerary of values lies in the arrangement of the individual values according to the participants’ personal preferences. Rokeach’s value study, due to its simplicity has often been used in surveys of value in various fields, e.g., social psychology [74,75], management [76], senior education [77], nursing [78,79], and pedagogy [80,81].

3. Materials and Methods

The CaLA, which we present in this paper, was developed precisely with a view to be used in more complex research surveys, in the entire population from the pubescent to the elderly, and has its possible applications on the effects of leisure. In the following text, we describe in detail the idea, structure, method of development, and construction of CaLA (Section 3.1) and its development process (Section 3.2). The CaLA development process was started in 2007 and continues until the present day, when version 4.0.2 is currently in use. In the process of development, the value context of leisure activities, subcategories, and categories played a significant role. Therefore, values influenced the changes in CaLA structure across the history of the different versions, as is described in Section 3.3.

Because the CaLA is primarily structured according to the content of activities, which may or may not be global in nature, it can be freely expanded. It is fundamentally culturally independent and leads to a sustainable way of examining leisure.

3.1. The Idea of the CaLA and Its Contribution

Our intention was to create a research tool that would meet the following criteria:

• Capture the complexity of leisure activities;
• Enable the use of measured data as variables in statistical hypotheses;
• Enable longitudinal comparisons of research across locations, different population groups (e.g., children, adults, etc.) and over time;
• Link other secondary characteristics (e.g., favor rates, usual duration, etc.) to individual activities.

The CaLA is a systematic tool that allows the examination of leisure activities across generations and is based on decimal sorting. This principle allows individual leisure activities to be aggregated into higher aggregates. The CaLA now includes 287 activities, which are grouped into 77 subcategories and 9 main categories. The possibility of aggregating activities into higher units provides a unique opportunity for conducting research surveys with leisure activities as both the dependent and independent variable. Therefore, it is possible to operationalize the variable of experiencing leisure at the level of categories or subcategories. Occurrences of individual activities and their frequency are aggregated at the level of subcategories or categories, and data analysis can be carried out both at the level of higher units (subcategories, categories) and at the level of individual activities.

The main backbone of the CaLA consists of coded categories, denoted by numbers divisible by 100. The CaLA also contains subcategories divisible by 10 and individual activities that are not divisible by 10 and 100. However, a similar system using only the decadic scale which includes non-leisure activities was used in the National studies (based on Szalai [60]).

The CaLA, presented in this paper, aims to meet all of the above criteria. It unifies the examination of the structure of an individual’s leisure time and addresses the possibility of comparing the results of individual research investigations because of its universality, and provides a synthetic view of leisure through basic categories. In the long term, the CaLA will provide systematization and the opportunity to compare survey results across different locations.

In designing the CaLA, we have drawn on two basic and interrelated principles:

• The content similarities of leisure activities;
• The value consequences of leisure activities.

The principle of content similarity of leisure activities is obvious and does not need research confirmation. To prove the effectiveness of the second principle, it was necessary to conduct research which will:

• Confirm the presumption that the connection between values and leisure which was theoretically anticipated by Max Kaplan [17], and which we have already tentatively confirmed in previous research [61,62,63];
• Confirm the specific internal links between the categories of leisure activities recategorized on the basis of the value consequences identified by the proposition in 1.

These assumptions also form the basic hypotheses of the research published in this paper and form the basis for the confirmatory analysis of the adjusted CaLA based on the value consequences of the various categories of leisure activities.

Secondary variables mapping additional qualitative indicators (favor, frequency, time, level achieved, difficulty, organization) are linked to the content structure of the CaLA.

A major problem related to the practical application of the CaLA is its language dependency. Although the CaLA was originally developed for Czech, it has been translated into English and currently its primary language is English. Adding additional language is encouraged and the creators of the CaLA are open to collaboration with researchers across the world. With the addition of a language, the authors are also obliged to keep the language up-to-date and to aid further development of the CaLA.

3.2. Basic Structure of the CaLA Based on Content Similarity of Leisure Activities

Dewey’s Decimal Classification [82], used in libraries, was used as a starting point in distinguishing the content proximity of activities. This classification is based on thematic proximity and allows the grouping activities in a similar way to books in a library. Dewey’s sorting in its basic version contains three levels of generality (hundreds, tens, and units), which we have adopted into the CaLA, creating three basic levels in its structure:

• Categories (categorized in hundreds);
• Subcategories (categorized in tens);
• Individual activities (categorized in units).

In this classification system, each individual activity is assigned a code consisting of three digits. An example of which is shown below, the single activity 555 is Choral Singing (Figure 1).

According to content relatedness, the individual leisure activities were classified into subcategories and categories. For each activity, in addition to the name and a brief description, it is indicated whether the activity is active, passive or combined, as well as those keywords help to identify the activity in the automated questionnaire systems.

The methodological work with the CaLA is based on the fact that we are working with a variable called “leisure experience”. This variable has the character of nominal data due to the equality of individual leisure activities [83] (pp. 103–104). Therefore, it is not possible to say that activities in categories with a lower number (e.g., 100) are less important than leisure activities in categories marked with a higher number (e.g., 800). The numeric system here represents the ease of extensibility and clarity as well as simplifying the way in which the measured data are accumulated.

At the same time, the measurement outputs can become operationalized variables and may enter research surveys as a separate variable. Due to its categorical nature and in relation to the research question, it may appear as a dependent variable in some cases, and as an independent variable in others. This situation is similar to the secondary variables that are linked to the basic CaLA and its description is discussed below.

The CaLA is suitable for use in many analytical operations with categorical data (e.g., absolute, relative, and cumulative frequencies), both at the level of individual activities and at the category and subcategory levels. There are many advantages to using the CaLA in examining leisure experiences. One is the possibility of comparing survey outputs from a demographic or geographical perspective. In the long term, the CaLA provides the benefit of being able to compare or map the historical development of leisure experience patterns.

The content structure resulted in the first versions of the CaLA (1–3), where the number and content focus of the basic categories, subcategories and activities gradually evolved. The key problem raised by this systematization was both the unevenness of the number of activities in each category and the imbalance of the structure (a less fundamental problem), but also the problematic grouping of activities which are close in content. It was therefore necessary in the development of the CaLA to extend the element of decimal systematization by an additional dimension that emphasizes not only the formal content aspect of the activity, but also the motivation for the activity and its importance for personal development. In particular, the objectives that the individual activities fulfil in the leisure experience played an important role in the consideration of the organizational structure of the activities in the CaLA. This level of organization is psychosocial and developmental and cannot be captured by content analysis alone.

3.3. Restructuring the CaLA on the Basis of the Value Consequence of Leisure Activities

3.3.1. The Importance of Values for Motivation to Do an Activity

The act of choice itself plays an important role in assessing the psychosocial level of leisure activities. It is widely agreed that this choice is never entirely free, but is determined by a number of external and internal factors [3]. For the construction of the CaLA, we considered internal factors that are linked to personality, which is central. In particular, we looked for factors that would help to differentiate motivation in choosing an activity more subtly. The act of choosing a leisure activity, meanwhile, is not only based on its content attractiveness, but also on a person’s attitude towards it and, above all, in the motivation to pursue it. We believe that for the choice of leisure activity, values play a central role in the decision-making and motivation, which are key factors [67,68].

3.3.2. Data Collection and Measurement

To confirm the assumption concerning specific influences among values and leisure activities and the consequently restructuring of the CaLA, we planned and conducted a nationwide survey. The research was designed as cross-sectional ex-post-facto. This approach is often used to measure and analyze inferences of the social factors on specific phenomena [84,85]. The survey was carried out nationwide across the Czech Republic. The examined relationships were part of a wider research focusing on leisure and value preferences of the respondents.

The survey examined data collected using a structured questionnaire [85] which was completed and returned from 5175 responses. Of these, 2204 (42.59%) were men, 2957 (57.14%) were women and 16 (0.17%) were other gender. From these respondents, we received information about 31,709 leisure activities, which means 6.13 activities per respondent on average. The respondents were aged between 15 and 90, with an average age of 46.8. The data were collected from September 2018 to June 2019. The survey was delivered both electronically and using a hard paper copy. In the case of respondents who were not able to fill out the questionnaire online, in-person interviews or assisted completion of the questionnaire were utilized. The respondents were selected across the country using a stratified selection with stratification criteria of gender, age, and size of the municipality. Inside the stratified groups, the questionnaire was widely and randomly spread across the population thanks to more than 200 volunteers who helped by delivering the survey. The collected data can be considered representative of the gender and age of respondents and size of the municipality—in most of the stratification criteria, the difference between population and samples in stratification criteria was less than 10%.

Leisure activities were measured using the CaLA, version 4.0.2 (

Table 1. Leisure activities—measured counts in categories.

Leisure Activities—Measured Counts in Categories	n	f
100 Information, IT, Communication and General Issues	4523	14.26%
200 Humanities	1313	4.14%
300 Literature and Languages	2875	9.07%
400 Household, Technology and Hobbies (including Nature, Science and Medicine)	4675	14.74%
500 Arts	3017	9.51%
600 Personal Activities, Travelling, Tourism, and Geography	5297	16.71%
700 Sports, Games and Fun	5551	17.51%
800 Social Activities	2768	8.73%
900 Virtual Reality and Social Activities in The Virtual World	1690	5.33%
Total	31,709

). For the statistical analysis, the summary of counts of activities in each category was used. These summarized categories could be considered a categorical variable and this was employed in statistical analysis as a variable.

To measure the values, the slightly innovated Rokeach scales of terminal and instrumental values [66,67], listed in Table 8, appeared to be the most appropriate, providing a finer breakdown and allowing a more detailed analysis rather than the frequently used universal values of S. Schwartz [69]. In contrast to Rokeach’s measurement method originally used (ranking respondents’ values by importance), we used a measure of value preference using preference scales (1–10), with 1 indicating completely negligible value importance and 10 indicating maximum value importance for the respondent. With this measurement method, we obtained a true to life image of each respondent’s values’ scale. Because we needed to use the values’ preferences as categorical variables, we had to transform them into a scale containing four categories. The categorization of each value preference (P) for a specific respondent was calculated using the mean of measured preferences (𝜇) and standard deviation (𝜎) where:

VP₁—low preferences—is the category of preferences P < 𝜇 − 𝜎;

VP₂—lower preferences—the category of preferences P ≥ 𝜇 − 𝜎 and P < 𝜇;

VP₃—higher preferences—is the category of preferences P ≥ 𝜇 and P < 𝜇 + 𝜎;

VP₄—high preferences—is the category of preferences P ≥ 𝜇 + 𝜎.

In order to verify the structure of the CaLA categories, the internal homogeneity of the categories and the correct grasp of the classification, we proceeded to verify the functionality by correlating the measured Rokeach values with the categorical value preferences. For this purpose, we used the sorted Rokeach sets of target values when distinguishing intrapersonal and prosocial values and instrumental sets when distinguishing moral and competence values.

3.3.3. Reliability and Validity of the Measurement

When measuring leisure activities using CaLA, it seems to be quite difficult to prove the reliability of the measurement. The reason for this is that personal leisure structure changes continuously over time. Hence, changes in the results in repeated measurements do not necessarily indicate the lack of reliability. Another problem is each person realizes that their activities have different intensities during the year cycle and they may prioritize the activities depending on the time of the measurement. Moreover, several activities may not be recognized and perceived as leisure activities. Finally, the last factor influencing the measurement is the inability to remember all activities at the time of measurement. All these factors can influence the reliability of the measurement. When we started to develop the CaLA, we discussed all these reliability questions, and we believe they influence more or less all quantitative or qualitative questioning on leisure. Nevertheless, we believe the construction of the CaLA in connection with the method of measurement can prevent several of the mentioned reliability problems. The provided measurement is a selection of activities from the list of all CaLA items. This method allows respondents to remember even those activities they are not actively pursuing/following at the moment of questioning. In the case of activities not listed in the CaLA, there is the possibility to offer one as a new activity. In the instructions for the respondents, we still repeat the need to remember all activities carried out over the year, even those which are rarely carried out. This form of questioning leads to the better performance of the measurement process, and when we tested repeated measurements on the focus groups of students, we received almost the same results.

The problem of validity is closely connected with the very construction of the CaLA. We started to collect the items as a list of well-known activities which came from two sources:

• Libraries, because the CaLA was originally inspired by the Dewey decimal classification;
• Publicly available lists of leisure activities in important areas (e.g., sports, games, arts, etc.).

Additionally, we used the focus groups (and we are continuing this to keep the CaLA updated) to enlarge the lists retrieved from the aforementioned sources. Focus groups not only helped us to maintain and enrich the CaLA, but they were and still are very useful in testing the content validity of the CaLA. Thanks to this continuous validity check, many items have been updated or commented on. The most influential in the content validity of the CaLA was the addition of keywords to almost all activities to improve the searching across the CaLA. The respondents often do not know or cannot spell the activity’s name exactly and the vast database of keywords, (which includes those names not exactly) connected with appropriate activities, makes their search more successful.

3.3.4. Hypotheses Testing

We tested each value with all leisure categories using the test χ² for R × C contingency tables [86]. Since finding a general dependence (Table 8) would not be sufficient for a detailed analysis, we analyzed the individual partial relationships between the values and the leisure categories in the table using standardized residuals, and we evaluated these residuals using a z-test [86,87,88], displaying in the results both positive or negative correlations that significantly affect the structure of the CaLA (Table 9). The aim was to see how each value relates to different categories of leisure activities—whether there is a statistically significant relationship between a particular category of leisure activities and intrapersonal, prosocial, moral and competence values. Based on the relationships (value implications) thus identified, we proceeded to revise the CaLA and adjust the main categories (Table 9).

3.4. Additional Quantitative and Qualitative Indicators of Leisure Activities

The occurrences of leisure activities in the measurement can complement other quantitative and qualitative indicators, which we collectively refer to as secondary variables. These indicators complement and extend the content of leisure activities with additional characteristics—both quantitative and qualitative. In the case of quantitative characteristics, we measure those which can help to describe the objective properties of an activity. It is the frequency, duration, and organization. However, as regards qualitative characteristics, we measure those which allow us to discover the inner experiencing activity. This is especially in the favor, intensity, and level of skills used in an activity.

Categorical scales ranging from 10 to 100 were used to measure the secondary variables of frequency, degree of favor and duration. For degree of organization, categorical scales in the range of 10–50 are used, and for level of challenge and level of skills, categorical scales in the range of 10–70 are used. (See Table 2, Table 3, Table 4, Table 5, Table 6 and Table 7.) All scales were designed to be extensible, opening up the possibility of future additions and refinements to the measurements. Using secondary variables, we obtained comprehensive information of each individual’s measured leisure activity. Additionally, secondary variables can enter research surveys either as a separable variable or as a variable allowing for a detailed filter-like selection of leisure activities according to measured characteristics.

3.4.1. Additional Scales Used for Measurement of Quantitative Characteristics of Leisure Activity

The additional (secondary) scales used for the quantitative (objective) description are:

• The frequency of the respondent’s leisure activity (how often the respondent engages in the activity);

  Table 2. Secondary variables—Frequency of activity.

  Scale Value	Meaning	Comment
  10	Very rarely	1 × per year
  20	Rarely	2–3 × per year
  30	Several times per year	i.e., 4–5 × per year
  40	Not too often	i.e., 1–2 × per month
  50	Sometimes	more times per month or, i.e., once per 14 days
  60	Weekly	1–2 × per week
  70	On weekends	Regularly
  80	More times per week	i.e., 3–5 × per week
  90	Daily	usually 1 × per day
  100	More than once per day	more times per day

  Table 2. Secondary variables—Frequency of activity.

  Scale Value	Meaning	Comment
  10	Very rarely	1 × per year
  20	Rarely	2–3 × per year
  30	Several times per year	i.e., 4–5 × per year
  40	Not too often	i.e., 1–2 × per month
  50	Sometimes	more times per month or, i.e., once per 14 days
  60	Weekly	1–2 × per week
  70	On weekends	Regularly
  80	More times per week	i.e., 3–5 × per week
  90	Daily	usually 1 × per day
  100	More than once per day	more times per day

• Duration of activity (how long the respondent engages in the activity);

  Table 3. Secondary variables—Duration of activity.

  Scale Value	Meaning	Comment
  10	Very short	Up to 5 min
  20	Short	5–15 min
  30	Continuously 15–30 min
  40	Continuously 30–60 min
  50	Continuously 1–2 h
  60	Continuously 3–4 h
  70	Continuously 4–6 h
  80	Continuously 1 whole day	Continuous activity except necessary breaks, night rest and necessary relaxation.
  90	Continuously 2–5 days	Continuous activity except necessary breaks, night rest and necessary relaxation.
  100	Continuously more than 5 days	Continuous activity except necessary breaks, night rest and necessary relaxation.

  Table 3. Secondary variables—Duration of activity.

  Scale Value	Meaning	Comment
  10	Very short	Up to 5 min
  20	Short	5–15 min
  30	Continuously 15–30 min
  40	Continuously 30–60 min
  50	Continuously 1–2 h
  60	Continuously 3–4 h
  70	Continuously 4–6 h
  80	Continuously 1 whole day	Continuous activity except necessary breaks, night rest and necessary relaxation.
  90	Continuously 2–5 days	Continuous activity except necessary breaks, night rest and necessary relaxation.
  100	Continuously more than 5 days	Continuous activity except necessary breaks, night rest and necessary relaxation.

• Its organization (whether it is an organized activity or not).

  Table 4. Secondary variables—Organization of activity.

  Scale Value	Meaning
  10	Activity is not organized
  50	Activity is officially organized by an institution

  Table 4. Secondary variables—Organization of activity.

  Scale Value	Meaning
  10	Activity is not organized
  50	Activity is officially organized by an institution

3.4.2. Additional Scales Used for Measurement of Qualitative Characteristics of Leisure Activity

The additional (secondary) scales used for the qualitative characteristics (subjective, experiential) are:

• Degree of favor of activity;

  Table 5. Secondary variables—Favor of activity.

  Scale Value	Meaning	Comment
  10	Very low favor	I don’t like this activity.
  20	Low favor	I like this activity rarely.
  30	Rather low favor	I don’t like this activity very often.
  40	Favor rather lower	I don’t like this activity more often than not.
  50	Favor	I am indifferent about this activity.
  60	Favor rather higher	I like this activity more often than not.
  70	Rather high favor	I enjoy this activity a lot.
  80	High favor	I like this activity a lot.
  90	Very high favor	I really like this activity.
  100	Maximum favor	I cannot live without this activity.

  Table 5. Secondary variables—Favor of activity.

  Scale Value	Meaning	Comment
  10	Very low favor	I don’t like this activity.
  20	Low favor	I like this activity rarely.
  30	Rather low favor	I don’t like this activity very often.
  40	Favor rather lower	I don’t like this activity more often than not.
  50	Favor	I am indifferent about this activity.
  60	Favor rather higher	I like this activity more often than not.
  70	Rather high favor	I enjoy this activity a lot.
  80	High favor	I like this activity a lot.
  90	Very high favor	I really like this activity.
  100	Maximum favor	I cannot live without this activity.

• Degree of difficulty of activity (how much of a challenge an activity poses to participants);

  Table 6. Secondary variables—Challenge—difficulty of activity.

  Scale Value	Meaning
  10	Very easy
  20	Easy
  30	Rather easy
  40	Moderately difficult
  50	Rather harder
  60	Hard
  70	Very hard (extreme difficult)

  Table 6. Secondary variables—Challenge—difficulty of activity.

  Scale Value	Meaning
  10	Very easy
  20	Easy
  30	Rather easy
  40	Moderately difficult
  50	Rather harder
  60	Hard
  70	Very hard (extreme difficult)

• A degree of skill (from a complete beginner to an “expert”).

  Table 7. Secondary variables—Skill—achieved skill in activity.

  Scale Value	Meaning
  10	Total beginner
  20	Beginner
  30	Pre-intermediate
  40	Intermediate
  50	Advanced
  60	Very advanced
  70	Expert

  Table 7. Secondary variables—Skill—achieved skill in activity.

  Scale Value	Meaning
  10	Total beginner
  20	Beginner
  30	Pre-intermediate
  40	Intermediate
  50	Advanced
  60	Very advanced
  70	Expert

3.4.3. Approximate Indication of Flow

Secondary variables Challenges and Skills represent the key components of flow defined by M. Czikszentmihalyi [33]. The level of flow is only approximate and could serve as a helping indicator especially in using CaLA as the diagnostic tool. Flow as an optimal experience could be detected in the case the challenge and skills are in equilibrium (see Figure 2).

4. Results

The results published in this paper can be divided into two parts. In the first part we present the findings of the correlation analysis between value preferences and leisure activity categories. In the second part, we present the final form of the CaLA, which is based on the results of the correlation analysis and represents the current version used in our research.

4.1. Validation Results (Confirmatory Analysis)

Table 8. General statistical significances among values’ preferences and leisure activities in C × R contingency tables.

Values	χ2 (Categorized Preferences VP1–VP4 of Specific Value X Categories of Leisure Activities 100–900; Number of Analyzed Activities n = 31,709; df = 24) 1
Terminal values—intrapersonal
Wisdom	171.35 ***
Self-respect	81.05 ***
Pleasure	187.31 ***
A Sense of Accomplishment	71.54 ***
Happiness	74.09 ***
Salvation	691.95 ***
Inner harmony	202.58 ***
Exciting Life	275.11 ***
A Comfortable Life	93.09 ***
Terminal values—prosocial
True friendship	136.024 ***
World of beauty–nature, art	265.87 ***
Freedom	119.67 ***
National Security	141.72 ***
Mature Love	184.06 ***
Family Security	93.66 ***
Equality	41.61 *
Social Recognition	86.99 ***
World at Peace	86.74 ***
Instrumental values—moral
Honest	92.11 ***
Obedient	82.21 ***
Responsible	68.76 ***
Loving	172.74 ***
Polite	37.02 *
Cheerful	83.82 ***
Helpful	117.26 ***
Broadminded	103.97 ***
Forgiving	83.78 ***
Instrumental values—competence
Independent	119.25 ***
Ambitious	72.83 ***
Intellectual	75.63 ***
Courageous	44.09 **
Capable	43.43 **
Imaginative	230.44 ***
Logical	67.19 ***
Self-Controlled	79.92 ***
Clean	196.63 ***

¹ Statistical dependence: * p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01 *** p < 0.001.

shows the summary of the (general) dependencies of the categorical values preferences (categories VP₁–VP₄ for each value) versus the leisure activity categories (100–900). Statistically significant dependencies were demonstrated for all values.

Table 9. Specific inner statistical significances among values’ preferences and leisure activities in CxR contingency tables.

Values	Categories of Leisure Activities
	100	200	300	400	500	600	700	800	900
Terminal values—intrapersonal
Wisdom	− **	+ ***					− ***	+ * (P)
Self-respect	− **	+ ** (A)		− * (P)	+ *	+ ***
Pleasure	− * (P)	− ***	− ***	− *	+ * (P)	+ ***	+ *	+ *	+ **
A Sense of Accomplishment	− * (P)	+ ***	+ ** (A)		+ **		− **	+ * (P)	− *
Happiness		− ***				+ **	+ * (P)	− ** (A)
Salvation		+ ***		− ***	+ ***	− **	− ***		− ** (P)
Inner harmony	− ***	+ ***	+ * (A)		+ **	+ **(A)	− ***		− ***
Exciting Life	+ ***	− **	− ** (P)	− ***	+ * (P)		+ ***	− ***	+ ***
A Comfortable Life		− ***		− *					+ **
Terminal values—prosocial
True friendship	− **	− *	− * (P)	− ***	+ ***	+ ** (P)		+ ***	+ ** (P)
World of beauty–nature, art	− ***	+ **			+ ***	+ ** (P)	− ***		− *** (P)
Freedom		+ ***		− ***	+ **				+ * (P)
National Security	− * (P)	+ ***	+ ** (A)		+ **		− **	+ * (P)	− *
Mature Love	− ***	+ *** (A)	− * (P)	− * (P)	+ ***	+ *	− ***	+ ***
Family Security		− *	− **		− *	+ **			+ * (P)
Equality	− ** (P)	− * (P)	+ * (A)				− ** (A)
Social Recognition	+ ***			− ***			+ * (A)
World at Peace	− *	+ *	+ * (P)		+ ***	+ * (P)	− *		− ***
Instrumental values—moral
Honest	− ***	+ **			+ * (P)		− * (A)	+ *	− (P)
Obedient						− * (P)	+ **
Responsible	− *** (P)			+ **	− **	+ ** (P)		+ *	− **
Loving	− ***	+ *		+ *** (P)	+ ***			+ **
Polite		− **							− * (P)
Cheerful	− **	− *	− * (A)	− *	+ ***	+ * (P)	+ *** (P)		+ * (A)
Helpful	− *	− ***		+ **	+ *	+ **		+ **	− ** (P)
Broadminded	− *	+ ***		− ** (P)	+ **		− ***
Forgiving	− ***	+ ***			+ *		− * (P)		− * (P)
Instrumental values—competence
Independent		− ***	+ * (A)	− ** (P)			+ ***	− **	+ **
Ambitious	+ ** (A)		− * (P)	− *	− *** (A)		+ *
Intellectual			+ **	− **	+ **		− *** (A)
Courageous	+ **				+ * (P)
Capable	− * (P)	+ **					+ * (A)		− * (A)
Imaginative	− *** (P)	+ *		+ ** (P)	+ ***	− **	− ***
Logical	+ ***			− ** (P)	− *		+ * (A)	− *	+ ***
Self-Controlled	− * (A)	+ ***	+ ** (P)
Clean	− ***	+ ***			+ **		− ***	+ *	− **

Table legend: Names of categories 100–900 are available in Table 1. Statistical dependence: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. + means a positive relationship in the positive range of value’s preferences with confirmation in the negative range of value’s preferences (the category is important for those who prefer the value and is not important for those who do not prefer the value). − means a negative relationship in the positive range of value’s preferences with confirmation in the negative range of value’s preferences (the category is not important for those who prefer the value and is important for those who do not prefer the value). + (A) means only a positive relationship in the positive range (VP_3–4) of value’s preferences (active positive dependence) but not confirmed in the negative range (VP_1–2) of value’s preferences (the category is important for those who prefer the value). − (A) means only a negative relationship in the positive range (VP_3–4) of value’s preferences (active negative dependence) but not confirmed in the negative range (VP_1–2) of value’s preferences (the category is not important for those who prefer the value). + (P) means only a positive relationship in the negative range (VP_1–2) of value’s preferences (passive positive dependence) but not confirmed in the positive range (VP_3–4) of value’s preferences (the category is not important for those who do not prefer the value). − (P) means only a negative relationship in the negative range (VP_1–2) of value’s preferences (passive negative dependence) but not confirmed in the positive range (VP_3–4) of value’s preferences (the category is important for those who do not prefer the value).

shows the results of the analysis of the detailed dependencies of the categorical preference values (categories VP₁–VP₄ for each value) versus individual categories of leisure activities (100–900). The individual symbols represent the positive or negative relationship between the value and the category of leisure activities (see the legend under the table). The results of the analyses presented in this table led us to redefine the categories of leisure activities and the creation of version 4 of the CaLA. In particular, this involved splitting the originally aggregated category Humanities and Social Activities category into three separate categories based on differential value preferences—Humanities (200), Social Activities (800) and Virtual Reality and Social Activities in the Virtual World (900). Particularly noteworthy is the divergence of the categories Social Activities (800) and Virtual Reality and Social Activities in the Virtual World (900), which would intuitively be assumed a connection, but whose experiences are so different and value-distant that we consider their division justified and necessary.

In the case of category 100 (Information, IT, Communication and General Issues), we mainly see negative relationships to values to a high extent. In particular, there is a negative relationship with moral values. To a high degree, these activities also have a negative relationship with intrapersonal and prosocial values. Category 300 (Literature and Languages) shows little dependence on any set of values. A strong negative dependence is seen for the category 400 (Household, Technology and Hobbies (including Nature, Science and Medicine)) towards intrapersonal and prosocial values. In contrast, category 500 (Arts leisure) shows a very strong positive dependence to intrapersonal values. Leisure activities in Arts have a rather strong positive relationship to the prosocial and moral values. Leisure activities of Sports and Games show a negative dependence towards prosocial values. Category 800 (Social Activities) which was originally part of Humanities and Social Activities. Due to the imbalance of activities in the original category and the different value preferences, a separate category “Social Activities” was created. This category shows a stronger positive dependence towards prosocial and moral values compared to category 200 (Humanities), where we also see negative choices for some values. Along with the development of category 900 (Virtual Reality and Social Activities in Virtual Space), a separate category of Virtual Reality and Social Activities in the Virtual World (900) was carved out of Social Activities, the value distinctiveness which compared to Social Activities outside of Virtual Space has already been discussed. For this category, we only see two weaker negative dependencies for the prosocial and moral values, which is remarkable given the social nature of the category. Among other things, these different value implications indicate a completely different conception of sociality in virtual space and the satisfaction of different needs than in the case of social activities experienced outside of virtual space. Judging by the value profile of this category of activities, they can be considered pseudo-social and to a large extent self-centered to narcissistic. A detailed value analysis of each category will be discussed in following publications.

4.2. The Current Form of the CaLA

Based on the content analysis in previous versions of the CaLA and the analysis of the value consequences of the individual categories of leisure activities, we have proceeded to a new categorization of the CaLA. Therefore, the fourth version of the CaLA (4.2.0) has now been created dividing leisure activities into nine basic categories [89]:

• 100 Information, IT, Communication and General Issues
• 200 Humanities
• 300 Literature and Languages
• 400 Household, Technology and Hobbies (including Nature, Science and Medicine)
• 500 Arts
• 600 Personal Activities, Travelling, Tourism, and Geography
• 700 Sports, Games and Fun
• 800 Social Activities
• 900 Virtual Reality and Social Activities in the Virtual World

4.2.1. 100 Information, IT, Communication and General Issues

In the first category, the common denominator of leisure activities is information and working with information. This is information disseminated both via the Internet, through books, newspapers and magazines. The category also includes IT work, office applications, computer hardware activities, also activities related to the use of mobile phones, tablets and computer networks, information search, work with specific online applications (e.g., online banking) and e-learning. The last subcategory, focusing on computers, includes activities that are oriented towards programming and web applications.

4.2.2. 200 Humanities

The category of humanities activities includes several disciplines. The subcategory of philosophy includes various activities that focus on Western and Eastern philosophy and history, logic, ethics and metaphysics. Subsequent activities deal with mythology or magic, parapsychology and the occult. Other important subcategories are psychology and social sciences, history and religion.

4.2.3. 300 Literature and Languages

This category focuses on the traditional types of leisure activities related to literature and includes both the mother tongue and foreign languages. The field of mother tongue and literature includes linguistics, reading and literary creation. Leisure activities that focus on foreign languages have a similar structure to the subcategory dedicated to the mother tongue.

4.2.4. 400 Household, Technology and Hobbies (Including Nature, Science and Medicine)

This category is divided into two parts. The first includes subcategories and activities that focus on mathematics, physics, earth sciences, medicine, biology, agriculture, and technology. The second subcategory is devoted to activities that focus on the household and hobby, i.e., household management and family care, animal care and handicrafts and production for specific uses. These two areas are deliberately linked because in this way the scientific subcategory has acquired a practical application in the second subcategory.

4.2.5. 500 Arts

The arts category concentrates on various disciplines of art, such as music, drama, visual arts and architecture, and takes into account both active and receptive approaches. Leisure activities focus on the perception of art, while others aim to develop talent and guide individuals in different fields of art. The actual activities in specific artistic directions are then distinguished by the subsequent subcategories.

4.2.6. 600 Personal Activities, Travelling, Tourism, and Geography

Leisure activities in this category are interrelated with self-care, self-development, and self-satisfaction with the goal of experiencing inner well-being. The subcategories begin with activities focused on personal life, and the following subcategories include leisure activities designed for self-development and helping others, eating and drinking, collecting, hiking, traveling and staying in the countryside.

4.2.7. 700 Sports and Games

This category, which was originally devoted only to sport, has gradually been expanded to include games and entertainment activities that are inherent to sport and cannot be separated from it. Games and entertainment include, for example, cheering for sportspeople and sports clubs or doing puzzles and playing board games. The subcategories dedicated to sports include ball sports, water and air sports, winter sports, martial arts, strength and conditioning sports and precision sports. The last subcategory, watching and following sports, includes all sport-related activities, such as attending sporting events, watching sports on TV or on the internet, or coaching.

4.2.8. 800 Social Activities

This category includes activities where the common denominator is social contact. The first subcategory is family, social care, pedagogy, and work. The other subcategories follow chronologically and include various types of social activities in other social groups, social events, as well as electronic and traditional correspondence. The subcategory of leisure organizations captures participation in leisure activities in various leisure organizations. The last subcategory covers leisure work for political parties or communities of interest and volunteering.

4.2.9. 900 Virtual Reality and Social Activities in the Virtual World

Activities in the Virtual World require a separate category in the context of their development in order to capture all virtual reality related activities carried out to date. The first area of activity is playing computer games such as adventure, arcade, action games or simulators. The other subcategories include virtual reality in connection to computers and virtual online worlds, such as second life. The following three subcategories link communication in virtual reality, i.e., activities related to communication media and multimedia (video channels and blogs, chatting and online communication), as well as all other activities related to social networks. It is evident that this area will continue to develop and therefore the structure and content of this category will continue to expand.

5. Discussion

In the discussion, we must particularly point out two basic uses of the catalogue and mention the benefits which this instrument brings to researchers in leisure as well as to experts in helping professions—psychologists, counsellors, personal coaches, social workers, and pedagogues, and even politicians and communities.

5.1. Usage of CaLA

The CaLA presented in this paper is more than just a research tool that we used in our research, but it can also be used as a diagnostic tool.

It allows researchers to acquire the quantitative measurements of leisure from a selected section of the population and analyze the trends and preferences in leisure activities. In connection with other factorial variables, the measured preferences can be used as a part of hypotheses. It offers the categorical variable containing numerical values for leisure activities preferred at the level of categories, subcategories, or even on the level of each activity. Additional variables could be a part of hypotheses, as well. Therefore, we can analyze the relationships between, e.g., socio-demographical factors (age, gender, occupation, etc.), attitudes to several problems, personal values, and different types of measured skills, etc., and leisure preferences.

Although the CaLA was originally designed as the research instrument, it can be in a limited way used as a diagnostic tool, as well. In diagnostical use, the individual’s activities are measured and can be analyzed on a personal level in connection with other personal characteristics. All additional variables can also be measured, and show in detail the plasticity of an individual’s leisure activities and experience. The leisure experience reflects someone’s personality in many ways and this issue has been addressed by a number of authors [1,3,17,19,90]. Stebbins [3] (pp. 12–17) views the relationship between individuality and leisure as both an opportunity for self-development and self-fulfillment (especially through the relationship to devotee work and serious leisure), but also as a source of personal and social identity. According to Stebbins, the fulfillment of leisure can lead to a high quality of life and well-being. All these aspects can be influenced if we know intimately the way in which people experiences their leisure.

With the additional variables “challenge” and “skills”, the CaLA can approximately indicate the activities in which optimal experience, as referred to by M. Czikszentmihalyi [33] as flow, is achieved. Unfortunately, we are not currently able to detect directly from additional variables whether or not the activity could be considered serious leisure. Therefore, if the CaLA is used for diagnostic purposes, there is a necessity to engage other diagnostic procedures.

However, with the theoretical grounding of the interrelationship between values and leisure [17] and our recognition of the internal structure of the relationship between value preferences and categories of leisure activities, the CaLA can contribute to assisting in counseling [41] leisure parents, educators, psychologists, or coaches of leisure.

5.2. Openness and Future Enhancement of the CaLA

At the beginning of the discussion, we feel it necessary to stress that we do not consider the CaLA to be a static and closed instrument. It is possible and necessary to build it further, to adjust and include other leisure activities according to new trends. This ensures the continued relevance of this research tool. It was therefore necessary to introduce the possibility of versioning the CaLA. Structured into major versions, subversions and include incremental changes. The ascending structure of different versions numbering consists of three digits separated by a dot. The first digit indicates the version number of the CaLA, the second digit its subversion and the third digit the number of the change within the subversion. The release of a version, subversion or change is always accompanied by its release date. The versioning of the secondary variable scales is ascending and single-stepped, indicated by the digits 1 to N.

Neither the CaLA nor the secondary variable scales maintain direct backward compatibility. However, we are developing an online technical interface (API) to allow the conversion of measured data obtained in different versions of the CaLA, including secondary variables. The complete version designation published in this article is 4.2.0.

5.3. Using the CaLA for Measuring and Comparing Changing Leisure

The CaLA is being developed for widespread use in leisure research. It is therefore distributed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license [91]. Currently, the CaLA is offered in English, Czech and Slovak language versions; however, the authors are open to collaboration in other language versions for which a complete technical background is available. The use of the CaLA for commercial use or the use of its modified version goes beyond the public license and requires a specific license agreement. The addition of a new language version is a change in the CaLA and is not covered by the CC license. Therefore, it must be carried out under the supervision and special license granted by the authors.

The CaLA is freely available on the Leisureresearch.eu website [89] in the Download section. A description of the application programming interface (API) for use in information systems is also available there. It can be used as part of questionnaire surveys in both printed and electronic formats [92] (pp. 309–334). It can also be used for classification in experiments or case studies [92] (pp. 371–412). It is available in XML formats [93] for integration into electronic research tools or CSV [94]. Additional variables are also available in the same formats.

From a methodological point of view, the CaLA items represent categorical variables of a non-ordinal type. Due to the construction, the measurement results have three pieces of information: the activity itself, the subcategory and the leisure activities category. The basic measurement can be supplemented with categorical additional variables that can be considered ordinal [87]. The measurement of leisure activities is usually multiple for each respondent in the research (the respondent has more than one leisure activity and different characteristics attached to it, using supplementary variables). Therefore, when processing data, it is necessary to think of the relationship between the respondent and leisure activities should be considered as a 1:N relations, where N ≥ 0. When identifying statistical dependencies related to leisure experiences, it is necessary to include the respondent in the research population as many times as the number of activities reported in the survey. This is because each activity represents it in a specific way.

The primary purpose of the CaLA is to survey the ways of experiencing leisure in a population, group or community. Due to its systematic breakdown and aggregation into higher units (subcategories, categories), the CaLA is also a suitable tool for long-term [92] (pp. 146–147), cross-cultural or comparative research [92] (p. 144) and in specific cases also for historical research [92,95], or research of motivation for volunteering [96]. In all of these uses, additional research hypotheses and related measurements can be linked to the issue of leisure.

Although the main reason the CaLA was developed was to research leisure, it can be used in other areas, i.e., in particular personal growth, local policy making and social development, and for community planning.

5.4. Application for Community Planning

In addition to the use of the CaLA for research on leisure and influencing individual development, the results of the measurements can also be used for community planning and development in the rapidly changing conditions of the contemporary world [97,98,99], of which leisure support planning is a part. By measuring currently experienced activities, and in particular additional variables (frequency, favor, duration, organization), it is possible to monitor not only the content focus of leisure in the community, but also the relationship with these activities. It is also possible to use the CaLA to measure activities required or desired and to adjust the plan of leisure activity support plans in community centers, leisure facilities [98], or family entertainment centers linked to commercial activities according to the measurement results [100] (p. 125nn), [29]. Long-term measurement and monitoring of trends in preferences and favor of leisure activities can also be valuable from a planning perspective.

5.5. Application for Policy Making and Social Development

The final stage to which the results of measuring leisure using the CaLA can be applied is local policy making at different levels of government and self-government-cities, towns or villages, counties, countries. As Dixon-Román and Nyame-Mensah [101] show, this issue is broadly relevant to the transformation of education and the expansion of educational activities to include support of leisure activities too. Leisure in this area is strongly linked to social policy [102] and equal opportunities issues. The results may be used by policy makers directly, or they may support policy advocacy efforts developed, e.g., by social workers [103] or municipalities [104]. Given the irreplaceable role of leisure activities in the prevention of risky behavior [105,106], in the field of social inclusion [107], in the field of social development [108], and in the prevention of pathological phenomena in the family [109], the CaLA can also be used as an auxiliary tool to map current leisure experiences and to plan its short- and long-term support. In doing so, the impact on the environment, travel and tourism and its sustainability will also play an important role [10,11]. Policy planning can also take advantage of the demonstrable link of leisure activities to value preferences and also support the social development of communities, municipalities and society through the promotion of prosocial values.

6. Conclusions

The CaLA that we have introduced in this paper is primarily the instrument for comparative research of leisure and can be used for the comparison of the historical development of leisure preferences as well as for the comparison of leisure in specific societies or communities. It was designed and developed in reaction to the existence of lot of instruments individually used for leisure measurement and research. These instruments often produce incomparable research results and do not reach the whole complexity of the leisure phenomenon. On the contrary, the CaLA, if used well, allows us to compare multiple research outcomes and the improved planning and the managing of support of both individual and (semi-)organized leisure activities. Thanks to the specific structure of the CaLA, the results of the leisure activities measurement can be used both as a dependent or independent variable in cross-sectional research designs, and could reveal the undiscovered relationships between experiencing leisure, sociodemographic and/or other factor influencing it or being influenced by it.

Last but not least, the research of leisure is not the only purpose of CaLA. It can be used in many professional areas. The practical applications of CaLA started by managers using it in leisure facilities and by helping professionals in counseling, psychology, coaching, and social work or pedagogy. However, it can be also used by public policy makers and contribute to society development and sustainability.

7. Limitations of Instrument and Study

The CaLA presented in this paper has several restrictions coming from its structure and limitations effecting the measurements. We realize that the attitude to the measuring and categorizing of leisure activities may not be shared by all researchers and its structure is not entirely balanced in every category and subcategory. The idea of bringing together the aggregation and the organization of the categories, although it brings a lot of advantages, it could be differently understood worldwide. Other cultures could have a different understanding of the structure of categories and subcategories. Within the CaLA the structure has been inspired by western thinking and history. Hence, it is obvious that the structure needs to be continuously improved and culturally adapted. When used for the analysis of personal leisure and experience, the CaLA is only an indicative instrument and must be supplemented by other diagnostic procedures.

This study is limited by the population of the Czech Republic, where the data were collected. However, thanks to the number of respondents in the study, it can be considered representative. There could be several limitations in the reliability of the provided measurement we mentioned in the text above, as well.

In future research we would like to continue with the enhancement of the CaLA, in two ways in particular: the addition of new activities and strengthening the CaLA structure, and working on additional variables with the intent to improve the accuracy of the measurement of leisure experience. At the moment, we are collecting new data using the updated CaLA (2021–2022). We intend to analyze the COVID-19 pandemic collection and record the changes in leisure activities in different population groups which will be shown in the following papers.