Prediction of Future Daily Behaviors: An Empirical Measure of Leisure

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Abstract
The study measures the degree to which people are able to predict their future daily behaviors. Using a time-budget methodology a sample of 49 males who were both married and currently employed were asked to predict in a diary what they would do during the next 24 hours. A diary of their reported behaviors allowed for several prediction errors to be computed. It was found that age, socioeconomic-status, and education were not related to prediction errors, while the intervening variable of the weather did affect predictions. It was hypothesized that leisure activities would contain the greatest amount of prediction errors. This hypothesis was supported in that leisure activities were included and dropped out of the day the most and had the greatest error in the amount of time it was estimated would be spent on them. Also included in the research was a measure of the overestimation or underestimation of the time to be spent on activities. It was found that leisure activities were predominantly overestimated while work related activities were underestimated. Perhaps, the attractiveness of activities is related to the accuracy of these estimations?

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