Youth risk-taking and leisure. A multifactorial model in the italian context
Literature on youth and risk has traditionally been dominated by psycho-dynamic
explanations of social action, studied within a set of adult discourses and searching
for single causes for risk-taking in practices like the abuse of alcohol and drugs,
unprotected sex and dangerous driving.
To overcome these limitations, we listened to young Italian people through a
survey conducted on a sample of 1,175 secondary school students and aimed at
collecting their viewpoints on and experiences of the relationship between risk and
leisure.
With an awareness of a plurality of factors influencing risk-taking among the
young, this study hypothesizes a contiguity between voluntary risk exposure and
gender, age, sociocultural family status, and leisure activities.
Both statistical textual analysis methods and logistic regression models were
applied to reach the results. The findings show different semantic dimensions of
risk according to different social factors.