Has leisure got anything to do with learning? An exploratory study of the lifestyles of young people in Hong Kong universities

This paper examines the role of leisure in the lives of Hong Kong higher education students. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies, the paper explores several patterns of involvement of full-time undergraduate students in leisure and learning. It further suggests various ways in which these two domains of students' lives can be related. A total of 266 diaries and 40 semi-structured interviews were used to solicit the data on student experiences across the seven higher education institutions in Hong Kong. Results showed a unique blend of the leisure and learning domains of students' lives especially in the context of group activities, in which leisure activities were related to strong social bonding and to the establishment of coherent study groups with classmates. The discussion focuses on the possible relationships between student learning and leisure and on how the different patterns of student involvement in these two domains inform an alternative conceptual framework for understanding the role of leisure in their lives and development. References are made to previous studies on higher education students and implications are drawn for future research in this area.