Serious Leisure Inventory and Measure

The Serious Leisure Inventory and Measure (SLIM) is a multidimensional self-report instrument that operationalizes Robert Stebbins's serious leisure perspective for quantitative research. Stebbins defined serious leisure as the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity sufficiently substantial and interesting for the participant to find a career there, distinguished from casual leisure by six durable qualities: perseverance, a leisure career, significant personal effort, durable benefits, a unique ethos, and strong identification with the pursuit. Gould, Moore, McGuire and Stebbins's 2008 paper in the Journal of Leisure Research translated these six qualities into eighteen measurable sub-dimensions and, using expert q-sorts and confirmatory factor analysis, produced a validated seventy-two-item inventory with acceptable fit, reliability, and equivalence across samples. SLIM turned a rich but qualitative theory into a calibrated measure that researchers can use to compare the seriousness of leisure involvement across people and activities.