Leisure Time Use, Meaning of Life, and Psychological Distress: Comparing Canadian and Korean Older Adults

Older adults’ day-to-day leisure time activities both reflect and stimulate physical, cognitive, and social capacities that contribute to their quality of life. To better understand how leisure activity choices and possible impacts vary across two cultures, this questionnaire-based study compared leisure time use, perceived meaning of life, and psychological distress for 617 older adults in Canada (n=298) and the Republic of Korea (Korea) (n=319). Compared to Koreans, Canadian respondents spent more time overall in leisure activities and devoted a higher percentage of their total leisure time to active, rather than passive, activities. They spent significantly more of their time on cognitively active activities, while Koreans preferred socially and physically active ones and scored significantly higher on both meaning of life and psychological distress. Both groups spent more of their time watching television than on any other single reported activity. Age group, retirement status, health, education, and income varied across the two countries and were significantly associated with aspects of leisure time use for each group. The results identify areas for improvement if Canadian and Korean older adults’ leisure time use is to effectively support their aging well.

resources from personal relationships and interpersonal contact nurtured by social activities.
Conversely, seniors' low social engagement has been associated with reduced subjective wellbeing (Simone & Haas, 2013). In Canada, active leisure activities, including physical, cognitive, and social pursuits, have been associated with greater health (measured objectively) and life satisfaction (measured subjectively) (Brooker & Hyman, 2010;Stobert et al., 2005). Wang et al. (2006) found that playing board games such as Mahjong could reduce risk factors for cognitive impairment in Chinese older adults, while television increased the risk.
Volunteering is potentially a way for seniors to remain socially engaged and productive. Joloza (2013) reported that volunteering in the UK was associated with greater overall life satisfaction for older adults. Statistics Canada (2011) reported that 36% of Canadians over age 64 years volunteered for charities or non-profit organizations. Although only 12.6% of Korean older adults volunteered in 2008, volunteer participation status in Korea is associated with self-reported successful old age (Shin, 2011).
Volunteer work shares one's knowledge and skills with others, and caring for children and seniors uses leisure time to provide another form of assistance; these activities may result in positive feelings and should contribute to positive self-esteem (Chang, 2004).

Leisure Activities, Meaning in Life, and Psychological Distress
One aspect of older adults' psychological wellbeing is a sense of meaning in life. Meaning in life is associated with a sense of self-concept and self-esteem and is different for each individual. Individuals create their own "global" meaning (sense of life goals and purpose) through cognitive, affective, and motivational mental processes (Reker & Wong, 1988. Reker and Wong (2012) explained that a person high in global meaning "…has a clear life purpose, has a sense of direction, strives for goals consistent with life purpose, feels satisfied with past achievements, and is determined to make the future meaningful" (p. 435). Based on an extensive literature review, Iwasaki (2007) argued that leisure contributes to quality of life across cultures by providing a way for people to create life meaning and purpose. Kim, Kim, Cha, and Lim (2006), exploring happiness in Korean culture, found that purpose in life was the most frequently-identified source of happiness after family relationships for Korean adults aged 20-64 years. Hutchinson and Nimrod (2012) found that older adults experience a deep sense of meaning in life when they can achieve goals and experience themselves as successful in their leisure activities. Meaning in life has been found to be important for mitigating stress and enhancing wellbeing Published by SCHOLINK INC. attainment, and disability (Cairney et al., 2009;Kikuchi et al., 2014;Kim, Bryant, & Parmalee, 2012;McHugh & Lawlor, 2012). Roh et al. (2015) found that participation in physical, social, and religious activity was associated with a decreased risk of depression among Korean older adults.
To summarize, leisure activity choices appear to be important for aging well. Active activities that exercise physical, mental, or social capacities have been found to enhance older adults' health and quality of life, and purposeful leisure activities might provide a sense meaning in life and mitigate psychological symptoms. But while research gives us glimpses into these associations in both and Korea, we have little systematic evidence of how leisure activities compare for these populations or of how these might be influenced by the distinct cultures and experiences. Most western studies (e.g., Dosman et al., 2006;Krueger et al., 2009;Statistics Canada, 2011;Stobert et al., 2005;Turcotte & Schellenberg, 2007) have focused on finding nationwide aggregate patterns of leisure time use and are not helpful in understanding specific older adult groups such as urban older adults, who are likely to differ from those in rural areas with regard to their activities and lifestyles. Some researchers have investigated Asian seniors' leisure time use (e.g., Lin, 2003;Wang, 2008), but we are not aware of any that have studied Korean older adults in detail. Cross-national comparisons (e.g., Gauthier & Smeeding, 2003) have rarely included Asian nations.
Our study addresses this gap by comparing categories of Canadian and Korean older adults' leisure time use and associations with personal background, perceived meaning of life, and level of psychological distress, Our intention is that the results from the study will help to increase our understanding of the activities and leisure choices of the two countries' older adults, building greater cultural sensitivity and identifying ways to better support both groups in aging well.
Published by SCHOLINK INC. of the questionnaire to the researchers' university offices. The surveys were carried out between July 20 and December 5, 2011. A total of 298 usable questionnaires out of 400 (74.5%) were returned in Canada and 319 out of 400 (79.8%) in Korea.

Sample
Participants in the study comprised 617 adults (298 in Canada and 319 in Korea) aged 55 years and over who were already retired or who only maintained part-time paid jobs in pre-retirement. Older adults in full-time paid work were not included.
Participants' ages ranged from 55 to 94 years, with a mean age of 67.3 years (SD 9.02). The age range for Canada was 55 to 93 years, with a mean of 68.6 years (SD 9.51); Korea participants had ages ranging from 55 to 94 years with a mean of 66.15 years (SD 8.39 Overall, then, the samples in the two countries were not strictly equivalent. These differences and their implications are considered in the Discussion section below.

Measurement
The questionnaire asked about respondents' personal backgrounds and their leisure time use in various activities, collected in self-report form. Respondents indicated accumulated hours they had spent during the past seven days; the list of possible activities (Table 1)

was adapted from Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (2009) and Brooker and Hyman (2010), which provide two broad categories (active/ passive leisure and personal/ social contribution), along with four sub-categories of active leisure time use: cognitive, social, physically active, and volunteer work.
Volunteer work and unpaid care work were included in the category of active leisure activity.
The 28-item Life Regard Index (Battista & Almond, 1973) Psychological distress was self-reported using the 17-item Typology of Psychic Distress (PSYDIS) scale (Mellinger et al., 1983), which rated indicators of depression, anergia (lethargy), anxiety, and perceived cognitive difficulties on a five-point scale. For this instrument, Cronbach's alpha was .92 for

Research Question 1: How Do Older Adults in Canada and Korea Compare in Terms of How They
Spend Their Leisure Time? Table 2 summarizes data and t-tests for hours spent on categories of activities in Canada and Korea.
Overall, Korean seniors spent only slightly more than half as many hours on leisure activities in total and therefore fewer hours in each category; as we would expect, t-tests on hours spent in all categories are highly significant (p=.000). Given the size of these differences, it makes more sense to compare percentages of total leisure time, rather than absolute hours, allocated to various activities (Table 3). t-tests for these showed significant differences between countries for all broad activity categories and for the majority of individual activities.
Koreans spent a significantly higher percentage of their leisure time in passive activities than did     Table 5 presents significant associations between background characteristics and time spent in active or passive leisure activities. These were found in Canada for age group (more time was spent in both active and passive leisure activities by seniors aged 65+ years), education (those with more education spent less time on passive leisure activities), work status (fully retired older adults spent more leisure time in both active and passive activities), and income level (lower income was related to more time spent in passive leisure activities). Those living alone rather than with others engaged in more passive leisure activity at a level just above the significance level of p=.05.
In Korea, similar significant differences were found for age group (respondents aged 65+ years spent more time in passive leisure activities), work status (those who were fully retired spent more time on both activity categories), and income (higher income was associated with more active leisure time).
Korean older adults' education level was positively associated with time spent in active leisure (with more highly educated respondents reporting passive leisure time). In addition, Korean older adults' health status was significantly associated with time spent in both categories; those with better health reported more active leisure time, while those with poorer health reported more passive leisure time. There was a small but significant positive association between Koreans' meaning of life rating and hours spent on active leisure activities (r=.11, p=.053). Also, there were small but significant negative associations for both countries between psychological distress rating and participation in active leisure activities, i.e., lower psychological distress was associated with greater participation in active leisure activities (for Canada,for Korea,.

Discussion
The aim of this study was to compare leisure time use, and its associations with background characteristics and measures of psychological wellbeing, for Canadian and Korean urban older adults.
group in this study, and these background characteristics are consistent with differences in social and economic conditions and cultural practices during participants' lives. The relatively older ages of Canadian respondents probably reflect Korea's lower retirement age and may help to explain the greater proportion of females among the Canadian respondents. The greater percentage of Koreans who were married or living common law or were widowed) might be due to both the younger age of Korean respondents and differences in marriage practices (Denney, 2015;Wu & Balakrishnan, 1992). The lower proportion of Koreans reporting excellent or very good health is likely to arise from the impact of years of war and subsequent poor economic conditions experienced by many of that country's seniors. Perhaps the greatest difference between respondents in the two countries was in education, again reflecting the probable impact of war and economic distress. The lower percentage of Koreans who were fully retired is consistent with Korea's lack of comprehensive retirement benefits (Howe et al., 2007) and is consistent with Koreans' lower household incomes.

Leisure Time Use
Older adults in Canada reported nearly twice as much leisure time as those in Korea, which is consistent with the lower percentage of fully-retired Koreans in our sample. It could also be at least partly due to a cultural distaste for leisure in Korea; Lee (2005) points out that today's older Koreans were highly motivated during their working lives to work hard and avoid idleness, and these Confucian attitudes might influence how they value, participate in, and report leisure activities in retirement.
In terms of specific leisure activities, the prevalence of TV watching (a passive activity) in both countries seems to transcend the influences of education, income, and culture. This echoes findings by Choo (2002) and Lee (2005) for Korea, although in Canada browsing the Internet has become the top adult leisure-time activity, with TV watching now third (Booknet Canada, 2017).
Canadians' higher percentage of leisure time spent on active leisure activities, and their emphasis on cognitively active ones, are consistent with their education levels compared to Koreans in our sample.
Koreans spent significantly higher percentages of their leisure time on physically active activities, while Canadians used more of their time to volunteer. This confirms research on the lack of volunteering in Korea, which relates it to lower education levels and economic hardship earlier in life (Shin, 2011). Also, Lee (2005) points out that leisure activity choices tend to be consistent pre-and post-retirement, so these difference may reflect cultural patterns in the two countries during these older

Meaning of Life and Psychological Distress
Koreans' significantly higher score on perceived meaning of life could reflect its greater explicit importance in Korean culture, which is rooted in a long Confucian tradition of collectivist and spiritual values rather than materialistic and individualist ones (Kim et al., 2006). Interestingly, these values are not reflected the greater emphasis on activities for oneself rather than for others among Koreans in our sample. Their significantly higher reporting of psychological distress is consistent with other research showing stresses on older Koreans from lack of a pension system, diminished family support, and shifts away from traditional filial piety (Bell, 2004;Harlan, 2014;Yang, 2011).
Religious or spiritual activity, which was not included in this study, could also help to explain these results, since research suggests that these mitigate depression and support health among older adults (Roh et al., 2015;Zimmer et al., 2016). It is possible that excluding these from our survey obscured respondents' concerns with meaning and purpose by itemizing more self-focused activities.
We had hoped for more insight into older adults' reported sense of meaning in life, particularly in light of literature that identifies it as an important component of happiness in Korea (Kim et al., 2006). The association of greater active leisure activity with lower psychological distress, while not a causal one in this study, is consistent with extensive literature on the positive impact for older adults of exercise, social support, and cognitive activity (e.g., Cairney et al., 2009;Forsman et al., 2012;McHugh & Lawlor, 2012). This adds to evidence that active leisure activities among seniors in both countries seem important for reducing later-life mental and physical health challenges, consistent with established guidelines for aging well.

Associations between Background Variables and Leisure Activity Choices
Unsurprisingly, age, retirement status, and income were significantly associated with total leisure time hours, although age group was not significant in Korea, possibly due to Koreans' earlier retirement age of 55 years. Those who were fully retired or (in Korea) had higher incomes had significantly more leisure time. This may reflect Korean seniors' need for more part-time work to compensate for their overall lower incomes. Because Canadian incomes are generally higher than those in Korea, it is possible that a finer breakdown for household income (with more than one category above $40,000) would have resulted in a significant association between income and leisure time for Canada.
Significant associations between background characteristics and use of leisure time for active or passive activities were largely the same across the two countries, probably reflecting the importance of time availability (when retired), education (for greater focus on active leisure), and income level, which is likely to be associated with education and also would support involvement in more costly active leisure activities. These commonalities suggest that cultural background might be less important than the above variables for choice of passive or active leisure activity.
The association between Koreans' health status and time spent on active versus passive leisure activities is consistent with extensive literature linking engaged lifestyles with health (e.g., Adams et al.,