Concensus Projects

04-18-2006 3:59 EST (0148 GMT)

Background to the project

The World Expo 2006 will be a landmark leisure event in the history of leisure and tourism. But, it must be more than a showplace for leisure products, services, current knowledge, practice or policy. Rather, to leave a lasting legacy within China and for the entire global community, EXPO 2006 must also produce and transfer new, unique, and significant knowledge about leisure and tourism that will be determine used within China and across the world to foster social, cultural, and economic development.

The Nature of The Project

Rationale + Objectives

There are many beliefs, interpretations and perspectives about how and to what extent leisure contributes to the quality of life, in general, and in particular to health outcomes at the individual and societal level. Moreover, World Leisure argues that leisure is integral to the social, cultural, and economic development of developing and developed societies alike. The question to be answered is: To what extent is there evidence that leisure contributes to these desirable societal outcomes at the micro (individual) or macro (population) level?

Leisure scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers understand that the quality and quantity of research-based evidence underlying a commonly-accepted point of view, practice, or policy can vary considerably, ranging from very strong scientific support to tenuous support at best. Thus, evidence used to support many current leisure policies and practices may be weak or non-existent. The shortage of ¡°hard¡± evidence reduces the confidence in current supporting arguments underlying both policy and practice.

Therefore, the objectives of the project are:

To examine critically current evidence concerning a number of leisure issues/topics including the processes and mechanisms by which leisure contributes to social, cultural, and economic development.

To achieve general agreement (¡°consensus¡±) on the extent of support for the many claims for leisure as a key ingredient of human development and wellbeing based upon analyses by the world¡¯s best experts.

To identify key issues and research questions (substantive, theoretical, methodological) for future research agendas.

To contribute significantly to the knowledge base underlying the Global Declaration on Leisure expected to flow from the Leisure Summit.

To provide the content for a publication containing supportable claims for the benefits of leisure.

For this project, ¡°consensus¡± is defined as a collective opinion based on the best knowledge available; that is the achieving of general agreement by experts based on a thorough understanding of the pertinent literature together with face-to-face discussion and debate.

The Process and Its Implementation

To achieve the foregoing, an evidence-based Cconsensus Symposium will be held in April, 2006, with the major outcomes reported in a Plenary Session of the 9th World Leisure Congress in October, 2006. The final papers, as revised after the debate and critiqued at the consensus symposium, plus the general consensus statement and research agenda, would be published as a book, and translated into several languages, under the auspices of a Chinese publisher. In addition, selective materials would be transformed into electronic media for wide distribution.

Source: Zhejiang Online

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