Approaches to measuring cultural diversity in recreation

Abstract

Measuring cultural diversity in recreation has become an important topic because of the increasing coverage of and interest in ethnicity and cross-cultural aspects of recreation. Introducing theories and methods from established disciplines other than leisure studies/recreation and park studies is necessary to understand this important issue. In this article, we first define recreation and examine different aspects/domains of recreation cross-culturally. To examine different domains of recreation cross-culturally, we need to have an unambiguous cultural definition as a basis to measure cultural variations. If the definition of culture contains cultural content (e.g., language, religion, family structure, cultural values), then we can specifically examine the influence of cultural content on recreation with various methods. We discuss different methods of measuring culture, emphasizing cultural consensus analysis to estimate the level of within-group or intracultural agreement. We also stress the issue of examining the homogeneity of ethnic groups as "real groups" from a scientific perspective. Finally, we describe approaches to measuring between-group or intercultural variations.

Parent Publication

• Recreation visitor research: studies of diversity

Citation

Li, Chieh-Lu; Absher, James D.; Hsu,Yi-Chung; Graefe, Alan R. 2008. Approaches to measuring cultural diversity in recreation. In: Chavez, Deborah J.; Winter, Patricia L.; Absher, James D., eds. Recreation visitor research: studies of diversity. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-210. Albany, CA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station. 207-216. Chapter 17.