Validation of a Questionnaire for Leisure Motivation

An Exploratory Study on Amateur Musicians’ and Sportspersons’ Basic Psychological Needs

Abstract

In proportion to the number of inhabitants musical leisure activities form an essential part of German culture. In comparison, the state of research on motivation of making music during spare time is poor with regard to empirical methods and measuring instruments. By comparison, similar problems apply to research on leisure sports. In an exploratory questionnaire-based online study, we examined the motivations of amateur musicians in comparison to the motivations of amateur sportspersons. Our sample consists of 214 amateur musicians (mostly wind players, 95 of them female) and 123 amateur soccer players (12 of them female). The survey took place in cooperation with the Musical Society of Hesse („Hessischer Musikverband, HMV“) and the Hessian Football Association („Hessischer Fußball-Verband, HFV“). Among other things, our study aimed at the validation of a newly translated German version of the „Leisure Motivation Scale“ („LMS“, Beard & Ragheb, 1983). The original English and the German version of the „LMS“ display comparably high reliabilities for the scales ‚intellectual‘, ‘social’, ‘competency/mastery’ and ‘stimulus avoidance’. The results clearly point to the principal importance of the need for relatedness in the investigated domains and therefore both the contact with other people and joint action. The statistically proven connection of content between the scales demonstrates the need for an improvement of the construct validity. The partly distinct differences between the two subsamples give reason to believe that methodological flaws occurred in the development of the original questionnaire, which actually was designed as uniform for all kinds of leisure activities. A revision for subsequent applications is suggested.