A Qualitative Study on the Association between Leisure Time and Identity among High School Students in Shiraz

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate leisure time as an element for identity formation of high school students in Shiraz, Iran. The participators of the present study include twenty male students from the third grade of high school. The participants were chosen randomly from different high schools located in the City of Shiraz. The analysis of the data, based on Grounded theory as a qualitative research methodology, was led into proposing seven categories and a core part. These categories include “ruling virtual environment”, “risky leisure time”, “choosing popular activities like national and foreign mass media” and “pop music taste”, “choosing appropriate place for their leisure time”, “gaining knowledge from new and modern sources of information”, and “sport which represents the importance” are seven categories and the core part covers reflectivity and post-traditional contexts. Generally, findings showed that post-traditional contexts and resources such as ICTs, media space, music market changes and global policies of sport, besides the contexts of friends’ community environment, socioeconomic status and the context of living have led into reflection on identity among the participants of the study.