Sociological perspectives and leisure research

Any research strategy is based on assumptions about the nature of the reality to be studied and how that reality may best be examined. Often in social research the assumptions are so fundamental to the perspective of the designer that they remain unstated. Although relatively little attention has been given to the theoretical bases of leisure sociology, there is no reason to exempt this aspect of sociology from theoretical scrutiny. Proposed here is an approach to sociological theory that takes three paradigms as basic to the development of sociology. Each of these paradigms will be outlined in terms of its model of society, research assumptions, and consequent leisure research.