Reliability of the Leisure Boredom Scale for Use with High School Learners in Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract

The reliability of the Leisure Boredom Scale (LBS) for use in South Africa has not been established. In order to address this situation, two studies were undertaken to document the reliability of the LBS in Grades 8 and 11 learners attending high schools in Cape Town, South Africa. In Study 1, a random sample of learners (N = 117) attending four independent high schools completed the LBS on two occasions 10 to 14 days apart. In Study 2, a multistage sampling procedure produced a sample of learners (N = 621) from 39 government high schools who completed the LBS. In Study 1, test-retest reliability using Cohen's Kappa was found to be moderate to fair for 9 items. The observed agreement ranged from 38.8% to 66.6% for the remaining 7 items. Internal consistency using Cronbach's alpha was 0.76 (Study 1, Time 1), 0.87 (Study 1, Time 2) and 0.76 (Study 2). It was concluded that the LBS has satisfactory reliability for use among high school learners in Cape Town.

KEYWORDS:

• Leisure Boredom Scale
• adolescents
• reliability
• South Africa