Three Measures of Leisure Activity: A Note on the Continued Incommensurability of Oranges, Apples and Artichokes

The three common measures of leisure participation are time, expenditure, and relative value. Time is weighted by frequency and duration of participation. Expenditure is quantitative and value ordinal. The results of such weighting are compared by finding for 78 residents of a western city the correlations of the ranks of their "10 most important" nonwork activities as measured by time, expenditure, and relative value. TauB is used as a measure of disarray.No significant correlation was found between expenditure and either time or relative value. A low correlation was found between time and value. The incommensurability of the three measures is reported and a warning suggested against using any one to represent either of the others.The author wishes to thank the E. C. Brown Center for Family Studies of Eugene, Oregon, and its director, Dr. Theodore B. Johannis, Jr., and the sociology department of the University of Oregon for financial support of this research.