The effect of leisure education on self esteem and well being

ABSTRACT The main purpose of this study is to determine the leisure education levels of university students and to explore the relationships between leisure education, well-being and self-esteem. The research was conducted to 711 students, studying at Anadolu University, for the pilot study, and 1104 students, studying at Anadolu University, for the empirical research. In this sense, two studies were carried out consecutively in this study. In Study I, in which the pilot study was conducted, it was aimed to develop "Leisure Education Scale" (LES). Scale development process was composed of focus groups to set off item pool, determining factor structure of the LES and testing measurement model, and analyzing scale reliability and validity. Following scale development, in the Study II (empirical research), to analyze LES factor structure, which was resulted from the pilot study, with similar and larger sample, and to analyze structural model on the relationships between leisure education with well-being and self esteem was aimed. In the Study I, the results revealed that the psychometric properties of the Leisure Education Scale including 36 items and 7 factors were satisfactory. These factors are labeled as awareness, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, social interaction skills, boredom, time management and problem solving. According to the results, it was found that Leisure Satisfaction Scale is a valid and reliable measure for a Turkish population and it has one-factor structure and 5 items. According to the results of the Study II (final study), it was found that LES is a valid and reliable measure for the university students in Turkish population. The results of the analyzes related with testing proposed hypothetical model, it was found that model fits the data well and there are significant positive relationships between leisure education and well-being, and between well-being and self-esteem. Key Words: leisure education, well-being, self esteem.