Journal article review: Leisure boredom and adolescent risk behaviour
Wegner L, Flisher A (2009) Leisure boredom
and adolescent risk behaviour: a systematic literature
review. Journal of Child and Adolescent Mental Health -
reviewed by Hilary Williams, Lead Occupational Therapist – Research
and Development, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation
Trust
‘Lisa Wegner (Department of Occupational Therapy) and her
colleague, Alan Flisher (Adolescent Health Research Unit), from the
University of Cape Town, have recently published a paper presenting
the findings from a systematic review of the literature
synthesising the current knowledge within the field of leisure
boredom and risk behaviour within adolescents. Their
study addresses the following research questions:
- What evidence is there of leisure boredom amongst adolescents,
and its association with risk behaviour?
- How is leisure boredom measured?
- What interventions have addressed leisure boredom amongst
adolescents?
They confirmed that research in this field has only started to
emerge and the majority of the studies investigating leisure
boredom and risk behaviour have taken place within the developed,
rather than the developing world. The literature to
date indicates that adolescents’ experience of leisure boredom is
influenced by a variety of different factors, including the
environment and the context in which they are situated.
They were able to locate three studies that measure leisure
boredom specifically and two studies that report on interventions
designed to address leisure boredom. The authors note that
studies so far are too heterogeneous with regards to both the
methodologies adopted and the context in which they occurred to
draw any conclusions with regards to this area of significant
interest.
They acknowledge there are a number of limitations with this
study, including the possibility of selection bias with regards to
the papers considered and only those published in English were
included.
The relevance of this paper is two fold:
- it provides an important summary of the work in the field of
leisure boredom and risk behaviour in adolescents so far, but
perhaps more crucially,
- it highlights the paucity of research into not only leisure
boredom and adolescent risk behaviour, the psychometric properties
of measurements of leisure boredom in this population and
interventions to address this but into the phenomena of leisure
boredom in general.’
If you would like to read this article, the full reference
is:
Wegner L, Flisher A (2009) Leisure boredom and adolescent risk
behaviour: a systematic literature review. Journal of Child
and Adolescent Mental Health, 21(1): 1-28.