Development of a Measure to Assess Youth Self-reported Experiences of Activity Settings (SEAS)

Abstract

There is a need for psychometrically sound measures of youth experiences of community/home leisure activity settings. The 22-item Self-Reported Experiences of Activity Settings (SEAS) captures the following experiences of youth with a Grade 3 level of language comprehension or more: Personal Growth, Psychological Engagement, Social Belonging, Meaningful Interactions, and Choice & Control. Forty-five youth aged 14–23 years (10 with severe disabilities) completed the SEAS in 160 leisure activity settings. The SEAS has good to excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha from 0.71 to 0.88) and moderate test–retest reliability (mean scale intra-class correlation coefficient  =  0.68), as expected due to changes in activity settings over time. The SEAS was able to differentiate various types of activity settings and participation partners. The SEAS can be used to gain greater understanding of situation-specific experiences of youth participating in various types of recreation and leisure activity settings, including youth with different types of disabilities and those without disabilities.

Keywords:

• activity setting
• disability
• experience
• leisure
• measure development
• participation
• recreation
• severe disability
• youth

Funding

This work was supported by the CIHR Team in Optimal Environments for Severely Disabled Youth, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (TWC-95045). Beata Batorowicz was supported by a CIHR Vanier Canada Doctoral Scholarship. No restrictions have been imposed on free access to, or publication of, the research data.