Evaluation of attitudes towards leisure activities in different cultures: An example of Ankara and London

The purpose of this study is to investigate attitudes towards leisure activities in different cultures as the example of London and Ankara. 221 volunteer state university students who have studied in London and 462 volunteer state university students who have studied in Ankara, totally 683 students, were participated to the study. 631 participants were accepted to the study (Ankara 427 students, London 207 students). First part of the data colection instrument consisted of demographic variables. As a second part, Leisure Attitude Scale (LAS) was employed to gather the data after conducting validity and reliability study of LAS in the coverage of this study. Descriptive statistics, multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA), analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Kay-Kare statistics method were conducted to analyze the data.The findings suggest that although there is a significant relationship between leisure attitudes of participants in Ankara and gender, there is no significant difference about age, adequacy of leisure time, income, living space and religion. On the other hand, there is a significant relationship between leisure attitudes of participants in London and age; and there is no significant difference about gender, adequacy of leisure time, income, living space and religion.Furthermore, there is a difference between two cities about the most preferred physical activity in leisure time of the students and there is a difference between two countries about where they participate in their recreational activities. Nevertheless both country prefer the same social, cultural-arts, touristics and other activities. In additon, there are various differences in activity participation frequency between two countries and this activities could not change according to income.The findings gathered indicate that leisure attitudes in Ankara and London differentiate in accordance with various variables. It can be said that students in London have more active recreational life than students in Ankara.Key Words: Attitude, Leisure Time, Leisure Attitude, Recreation