Conceptual framework

This research is based on at-risk youth and their participating in deviant leisure. The constructional framework below shows how deviant leisure is connected with the juveniles’ motivation of participation. This research attempted to investigate how these three elements connect with each other. What were the positive and negative outcomes from deviant leisure, as well as how these outcomes influence and affect on the behavior of these youths and their leisure participation.

Figure 3. Conceptual framework of this research

deviant leisure

motivation

of participation

Positive/Negative

outcomes

Chapter 3

RESEARCH METHOD

There are 4 sections in this chapter, research perspective, participants of this study, data collection, and research ethics. These 4 sections will describe the research methods of this study.

3.1 Research perspective

Shank (2002) defines qualitative research as “a form of systematic empirical inquiry into meaning” (p.5). Most qualitative researches helps describe or answer questions about particular events or contexts and the perspectives of a participant group toward events, beliefs, or practices (Gay & Airasian, 1996). Morrow and Smith (2000) also stated the purpose of qualitative research is to understand and explain participant meaning. Creswell (1998) also defined qualitative research as an inquiry process of understanding based on distinct methodological traditions of inquiry that explore a social or human problem. Conger (1998) stated the advantages of doing qualitative research are:

1. flexibility to follow unexpected ideas during research and explore processes effectively

2. sensitivity to contextual factors;

3. ability to study symbolic dimensions and social meaning;

4. increased opportunities:

-to develop empirically supported new ideas and theories;

-for in-depth and longitudinal explorations of leadership phenomena;

-for more relevance and interest for practitioners.

The author wanted to discover the at-risk youth and their perspective of deviant leisure and to receive more insight of how deviant leisure influences their thinking and behavior, and hopes to develop more ideas and able to explain the phenomenon of deviant leisure and its participants while conducting the study. Denzin and Lincoln

(2000) also claimed that qualitative research involves an interpretive and naturalistic approach: “It means qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of or to interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them” (p.3). Therefore, the author wishes this study can look into and understand the perception and behaviors of these juveniles through a qualitative paradigm.

3.2 Participants

3.2.1 Cases and interviewees

The main purpose of this study was to find out how deviant leisure impact on at-risk youth in Taiwan. Therefore the participants in this study were juveniles in the age between 12 to 19 years old. The diversion center is located in the southern part of Taiwan, receiving at-risk youth from the area and sent by the department of social welfare as well as the court. The main reason for choosing this particular diversion center for this study was because the author was working as a volunteer in this diversion center leading a small group to participate in different adventure programs in the past.

Therefore, the diversion center agreed to help and get involved in this study. Most of the juveniles stayed in the diversion center for the period between 12 to 18 months, evaluation will be conducted after one year of their stay. Having a dysfunctional family or commit delinquent acts or drop out of school are the main reasons for these participants end up in the diversion center. Thus these participants were judged by the courts and the department of social welfare as ‘at-risk youth’ with deviant behavior.

Purposive sampling was conducted during sample selection. The total of 11 participants were chosen by the diversion center, according to their level of presentation and their willingness to participate in this study.

There were 11 juveniles, who agreed to participate in this study. The author also interviewed one social worker, who worked in this organization, to explain each single profile of juveniles to the author. The former director of this organization was also interviewed to explain the teaching they provided within the diversion center. She

described how this organization functions, how juveniles came to the organization. The profiles of the cases are analyzed in table 2.

Coding Age family

3 Offenses of Causing Bodily Harm.(傷害罪)

G1 17 Mother left when he was young and stayed with his grandfather after his

father passed away.

On and off school. No Offenses of Larceny

H1 17 Both parents passed

Table 2. profile of the participants of this study

All of the 11 cases are male, aged between 13-19 years old. Seven of juveniles were from the southern part of Taiwan while two were from the eastern Taiwan and two were from the central part of Taiwan. The newest juvenile arrived in this organization two months ago. Five of them stayed within this organization just under one year, three of them were between one to two years and three of the juveniles have stayed in this organization three years already.

Seven out of ten juveniles were sent into the organization because of offenses of

larceny⁴. Two were there because of offenses against sexual autonomy⁵ while another two were sent because of using or selling drug. Nine of the juveniles were either drop out of school or did not participate in any school activities anymore before coming into the organization and four out of 11 youths admitted they were involved in either using or selling drug before coming to the organization. Among all eleven cases, the family status was very similar. Nearly all of them had dysfunctional family in common. Five of them were either raised by their grandparents or relatives and nine of them had one or both of their parents left/missing or passed away. The cases were gathered together and participated in a group activities session before individual interviews began. After the group session, individual interviews were followed. The interview questions were designed interns of their own understanding of leisure activities and how these activities influenced their lives as well as the motivations of participation.

3.2.2 Diversion system

House of Grace is a non-profit Christian diversion organization located in Pingtung, Taiwan. The organization has three divisions, two of which were the rehabilitation center for both males and females, who are addicts with drugs and alcohol. The third division is the diversion center for the youth at-risk. During the interviews were taken, there were total of 11 juveniles residents in this diversion center.

The juvenile at risk who stayed in House of Grace came from three different sources.

The first source is from the local department of education, who introduced the juveniles that have learning impairment or dropped out of school to the organization. The second source is from the regional department of social welfare, who introduced the youth with dysfunctional family (or no family) and needed the help from social welfare. The last source is from the court. The youth who committed a crime will be sent to the juvenile detention house before their trail. After their trail the judge will decide where to place the youth. If the juvenile committed a crime for the first time or with minor deviant

4 offenses of larceny(竊盜罪).

5offenses against sexual autonomy(妨礙性自主罪)

behavior, he will be sent home but they will be under probation, and all of their acts and behavior will be supervised by a probation officer. The juvenile who committed a more serious crime or had major deviant behavior will often be sent by the judge to the diversion where they will stay in a diversion organization (like House of Grace) between 12-36 months depending on their behavior during their stay in diversion. The juvenile, who has been in diversion before and committed a major crime or had recidivism behavior will likely be sent to juvenile correction school. (also known as juvenile prison).According to the former director of House of Grace and the information provided by the organization itself, the procedure of how juveniles enter the diversion is shown in the diagram below.

Figure 4 : The diversion system in Taiwan.

Diversion

3.3 Data collection

During data collection, the author will first introduce the purpose of this study to the participants. The participants’ profile will be collected during the first session. This includes their ages, time spending in the diversion center, family status, education level, reasons for being in the diversion center. Marx (1988) argued that the main transference issue for at-risk youth is lack of trust for adults in authority positions. Therefore to gain the trust from these at-risk youth participants are essential before any interview in depth begins. The first and second sessions were group activities led by the author. The purpose of the activities was for the author to get to know the participants better through a relaxing atmosphere, as well as to gain the trust from the participants. One- on- one interview will only take place after the author and the participants knew and trusted each other. All the participants were notified that voice recording device will be used throughout data collecting sessions. All the participants were informed before the session that all the data will be used for this study only and not for other purposes.

Game sessions and observation:

This research used the manuscripts from the interview also author’s observation note during interview and the game sections to analyze the data. A game session was conducted before in-depth interview took place. Within the small group game session, the author was focus on letting the participants to express themselves and to share how they feel through the group activities. By sharing the same experiences, hopefully would gain trust within the group as well as to the author. A series of activities was conducted before the interview was taken. One of the activities was charade. The youth was separated into two teams. Each team was asked to write down ten different items for one person from the opponent team to act out, and the rest of the team has to guess what the item is. The person who was in charge of acting can only use body language and cannot use any voice to indicate the answer. The picture or the writing these youth drew during the game are also use as a useful data during analyze process. Observation was also used during activities as well as interview session. The author observed how

participants interacted with each other as well as how they reacted to the given instruction.

Teachers’ point of view:

The author also interviewed one social worker and one former director who worked at the diversion center, to confirm the reliability on what the juveniles said during their interview.

In-depth interviews:

Interviews use the same principle as a focus group, but subjects will be interviewed individually. The participants received one-on-one interviews with the author. During interview the author asked questions according to the interview questionnaire (see appendix.1), and left all questions as open questions for the participants to described in details. Voice recording device was used throughout all interview sessions. A word by word manuscript will be type out for future data analyze after the interview. The method be used to examine the research of participants’ leisure selections and their leisure involvement. As well as how they defined leisure and deviant leisure and their motivation of participation. Also to discover the benefits or conflict they faced within their leisure participation.

Triangulation:

Triangulation was typically a strategy (test) for improving the validity and reliability of research or evaluation of findings (Golafshani, 2003) According to Mathison (1988) :

“Triangulation has risen an important methodological issue in naturalistic and qualitative approaches to evaluation [in order to] control bias and establishing valid propositions because traditional scientific techniques are incompatible with this alternate epistemology.” (p. 13)

Therefore, game and observations, teachers’ point of view plus in-depth interview were the three methods used in order to cross over and test the validity and reliability of this

study. Details of triangulation were showed in figure. 5.

Figure 5: triangulation of this study

3.4 Ethics of the study:

The main subject of this study is ‘human’ as well as all participants are under legal age of eighteen years old and under the supervision of the rehabilitation center. Therefore, all participants’ profile and personal information were confidential and the data collect from the participants were used for the purpose of this study only. All participants for this study were chosen by the diversion center according to their level of presentation and their willingness to participant in this study. Explanation of the study was given to all participants before any of the activity or interview took place. A consent form was given and signed to protect and respect the participants.

Games and Observation

In-depth interview

Teachers’

point of view

Chapter 4

THE UNDERSTANDING OF LEISURE

This chapter analyzed the manuscripts from the interviews and tried to understand juveniles’ understanding of leisure. This chapter will be separated into 2 different sections. The first section will try to explain juveniles’ concept of leisure activities. The section will explain the leisure choices and deviant leisure activities for at-risk youths.

10 out of the 11 cases were been asked about their own understanding and general knowledge of what leisure means to them. A1 thinks that leisure is painting, riding bicycle and listening to music. B1 thinks leisure activities are doing something relaxing and make himself feel relaxed. C1 says leisure activities are playing computer, doing sports, swimming, but he also asked if smoking is thought of as a leisure activity. He continued and said if smoking is considered a leisure activity, besides smoking, chewing betel nuts, drinking alcohol, chatting with friends and singing in KTV are all considered leisure. He also said that he thinks driving is his leisure, too.D1 thinks playing basketball, reading, writing and hanging out with friends are what he thinks leisure is.

E1 says what leisure means depends on different people, for him leisure is reading and singing or playing sports like baseball. He played most of the sports apart from upper class sports like golf. G1 thinks leisure is listening to music, watching television and playing musical instruments. H1 says leisure is something you are interested in. I1 says he does not know what it is, and later he says maybe going to the night market is what he thinks leisure is. J1 thinks leisure means not going to school. As for him, hanging out with friends, playing computer in internet café and smoking is leisure. K1 says leisure is sports, billiards, table tennis or listening to music.

我會覺得，畫畫。還有騎單車，聽音樂。...應該沒了吧。(A1) 休閒活動喔...就做比較輕鬆的事吧!(B1)

我覺得休閒活動是開車吧(C1)

看書，寫字阿...打籃球那些。就是，跟朋友出去玩這樣。(D1)

休閒活動我覺得，看人吧。看我喔。就是靜態的就是看書阿。我喜歡看書。

我也愛唱歌阿。就是比較靜態的。或是打球阿，打棒球阿。打棒球比較少阿。

其實什麽球類我幾乎都有碰過啦。除了比較高階的像什麽高爾夫之類的。(E1) 休閒活動...彈吉他阿，唱歌阿。跑步。(F1)

運動類吧。球類，或是撞球，桌球。或是聽音樂。(K1) 看電視，然後聽音樂。玩樂器，就這樣嗎？(G1)

就興趣吧! (H1)

不知道，就逛夜市 (I1)

From the manual script above we can see that most of the youth did not consider the deviant activities they participated in as ‘leisure’. Their concept of leisure is very similar to the general public. Sports and music are what most of them agree what leisure is. Therefore, even they do not participate in these activities, they still think that leisure is something positive and have good effects on individuals.

However, Out of the 11 youths, only two considered what they did in their daily life as leisure.

哈哈哈，那抽菸，吃檳榔，聊天，喝酒。然後唱歌阿。喝酒是還好，是去 KTV 才會喝酒。檳榔是冬天冷的時候才吃。菸是每天都在那邊抽。

然後還有就騎摩托車，開車阿，逛街阿。(C1)

就沒有去讀書吧。還有...陪朋友。還有在網咖裡打電腦，抽香菸(J1)

Interestingly, three juveniles identified and thought that the activities they participated in were “wrong”. A1 actually thinks that he stole other people’s motorbike and it was wrong. However, he thinks that smoking drinking and chewing betel nuts are

not consider bad, it is just the law restricted them not to do so. As for D1, he first said leisure is reading, writing and playing basketball. He followed and said that he thought leisure was ‘doing things that break the law’ or what else.

就是覺得....偷摩托車就是變壞的。然後我是覺得吸菸不算是變壞，只是政 府規定，幾歲幾歲不能吸菸。嗯...還有喝酒吧。 (A1)

如果出去…就做違法的事阿。阿不然咧？(D1) 就學壞阿就偷東西阿。(H1)

In summarizing this section, whether the “leisure activity” is deviant or not, the concept of leisure still remains as activities that are positive and have the effect to enrich individual’s life. Even for juveniles, when they think of leisure they would think of something which has positive effects on them. Only a few cases would consider their leisure activities deviant or wrong.

4.2 The choices of leisure for at-risk youth

This section will discuss the choice of leisure for juveniles. The factors that influenced how these choices had been made will also be discussed in the latter part of the section. It was difficult for the juveniles to define what deviant leisure is to them.

Therefore, this will be analyzed from the activities they participate in. There are several activities that the juveniles often choose to do during their free time or the time out of school (or not going to school at all). These activities are including going to internet

Therefore, this will be analyzed from the activities they participate in. There are several activities that the juveniles often choose to do during their free time or the time out of school (or not going to school at all). These activities are including going to internet

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