Leisure Activities in Career Guidance for Gifted and Talented Adolescents: A Validation Study of the Tel-Aviv Activities Inventory

Abstract

Leisure activities may predict adult accomplishment better than conventional predictors such as intelligence or school grades because their performance requires not only intellectual abilities, but also task commitment, persistence, and other cognitive and personal-social attributes that determine life outcomes. Research on the leisure activities of young gifted children has been sparse in part because of the lack of psychometric instruments designed for use with children. The construct validity of the Tel-Aviv Activities Inventory, a measure of leisure activities specifically designed for children and adolescents was investigated in 934 junior/senior high school students. The 62 activities inventory items were entered for factor analysis. The 10-factor maximum likelihood solution with varimax rotation was selected, resulting in extracting factors most similar to the hypothesized factor structure. The results indicated that the instrument may be useful for career counseling with gifted and talented children. Recommendations for the revision of the current edition of the instrument are suggested.