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This paper documents the development and first year evaluation of the TimeWise: Learning Lifelong Leisure Skills curriculum, which aims to increase positive free time use, and mitigate or prevent the initiation of substance use and abuse. The sample was comprised of 634 school youth attending nine middle schools in a rural area in eastern United States. Results from self-report data indicate that students who received the TimeWise curriculum reported being less amotivated and more motivated by identified and introjected forms of motivation. Students in TimeWise reported being better able to restructure boring situations into something more interesting; having higher levels of decision making skills, initiative, community awareness; and participating in new interests, sports, and nature-based activities.
KEYWORDS: Adolescents, free time, healthy time use, leisure education, prevention.
Introduction and Literature Review
As a child moves into early adolescence, he or she experiences increased freedom to engage in self-managed leisure opportunities because parents begin to relax their authority and allow room for their adolescents' growing need for autonomy and responsibility (Wright, 1956). It is important to understand the role leisure plays in adolescent development because leisure is a "key context for education and learning, for health care and the decisions that impact young people's health. . ." (Irby & Tolman, 2002, p. 3) and a number of researchers have argued that leisure engagements have the potential to contribute to a youth's successful transition into adulthood. Issues such as the development of autonomy from parents, experimentation with social roles, achievement orientation, and identity development are often associated with leisure behavior and experience (e.g., Harter, 1990; Kleiber, 1999; Kleiber & Kirshnit, 1991; Larson, 1994; Shaw, Kleiber & Caldwell, 1995).
Increased freedom in adolescence is associated with role and identity experimentation. This experimentation, which often takes place in the free time context, is essential for healthy development, but it also includes behaviors that might be developmentally maladaptive. For example, leisure time is also a context for adolescent rebellion, vandalism, and participation in unhealthy activities such as using drugs and alcohol, violent activities, and risky sexual behavior (e.g., Caldwell & Smith, 1995; Irby & Tolman, 2002; Levin, Smith, Caldwell, & Kimbrough, 1995). We recognize that some experimentation is developmentally productive (e.g., Baumrind, 1987, 1991) but of concern to this project...