Measurement invariance of the satisfaction with leisure satisfaction scale by gender, marital status, and age.

Background: Leisure satisfaction is the degree of positive perception and emotions that an individual acquires as a result of participating in leisure time activities, and it has an important function in maintaining and increasing leisure time participation. Some studies on leisure satisfaction address the comparisons between groups. These studies are based on the premise that the measurement tool used to reveal the between-group differences measures the same feature in subgroups.

Objective: In this study, we investigated whether the differences between the groups were due to the measurement tool by examining the psychometric properties of the leisure satisfaction scale.

Methods: The study sample comprised 2344 exercising individuals, including 1228 (52.3%) women and 1116 (47.6%) men. The structural invariance of the leisure satisfaction scale, developed by Beard and Ragheb (Journal of Leisure Research 12:20-33, 1980) and adapted into Turkish by Gökçe and Orhan (Spor Bilimleri Dergisi 22:139-145, 2011), was tested through multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis.

Results: The results indicated that the structural and metric invariance conditions were fulfilled across gender, marital status, and age in all subscales of the leisure satisfaction scale. Scalar invariance was obtained in educational and social satisfaction subscales across gender and in physical satisfaction subscale across marital status.

Conclusion: The study provides evidence for the future comparisons according to these three variables, indicating that the differences obtained will result from the real differences between groups rather than the measurement tool properties.