An instrument for analyzing the concepts of work, school, and free time

Participation in work, school and leisure activities provides young people with important opportunities to develop their vocational identities and career pathways; it also plays a crucial role in their school-to-work transition processes. Three studies to devise the Working, Studying, and Leisure Time Questionnaire, which assesses adolescents’ concepts of work, studying, and leisure time. The first study served to formulate the instrument’s items and to verify its factorial structure; the second used confirmatory factor analysis to test the instrument’s multidimensional structure; and the third study evaluated its discriminant validity and factorial structure invariance across gender. Results showed that the questionnaire is an effective and multidimensional measure for collecting data on adolescents’ concepts of work, study, and leisure time. It can also serve school and vocational guidance purposes and in screening adolescents whose ideas of work, studying, and leisure time poorly reflect current labor market demands.