Leisure Activities are Associated with Self-Efficacy in Childhood and Adolescence

Abstract

Leisure activities during childhood and adolescence play important roles in individual development. They may also contribute to self-efficacy (SE), which is a key psychological construct of Bandura’s social cognitive theory. Here we test to what extent SE is related leisure engagement by using data from a large-scale representative cross-sectional survey of German children, adolescents, and younger adults (N = 7,158). As predicted, sports, book reading, music, and SE were positively, but computer gaming was negatively correlated, even after controlling for a range of covariates. These findings confirm and extend previous work to suggest that engagement in popular leisure activities, except computer gaming, are positively associated with the development of individual self-efficacy during the first decades of life.

Keywords:

• Book reading
• computer gaming
• leisure
• music
• self-efficacy
• sports

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplement

Self-Efficacy Scale

Intro: I’m going to read you some sentences. Please tell me if this is the case for you.

• I can find a solution to any problem.

• I deal with difficulties calmly because I can always trust my abilities.

• I know that whatever happens, I will manage.

• If a new thing comes my way, I know how to deal with it.

German original:

Intro: Ich lese Dir einige Sätze vor. Sag mir bitte, ob das bei Dir so ist.

• Ich kann für jedes Problem eine Lösung finden.

• Mit Schwierigkeiten gehe ich gelassen um, weil ich meinen Fähigkeiten immer vertrauen kann.

• Ich weiß: Was auch immer passiert, ich werde schon klarkommen.

• Wenn eine neue Sache auf mich zukommt, weiß ich, wie ich damit umgehen kann.

Data availability statement

We are analyzing archived data from the Deutsches Jugendinstitut (DJI) München. The data were collected on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (https://www.bmfsfj.de/bmfsfj/meta/en). We have cited appropriate references in the text.

Notes

1 Data for the current study can be obtained by applying for a permission at the German Youth Institute, Munich, Germany. Contact: Prof. Dr. Susanne Kuger, Deutsches Jugendinstitut, Nockherstr. 2, 81541 Munich, [email protected]

2 Date of reference: 29^th January 2023.

Additional information

Funding

The authors do not have any financial interests by submitting this article. We did not receive funding for the preparation of this manuscript.