Decisive criteria for predicting individual leisure-time behaviours are gender, social background, subject studied, financial situation. The representative data for the Heidelberg student landscape show that social origins play a decisive role both in the choice of subject for study and in leisure styles. The explanation proposed for this influence is the internalisation of habitual dispositions acquired in the course of primary socialisation processes. More generally, leisure styles can be conceived of as an expressive dimension of underlying individual lifestyles. The results indicate the existence of distinctive male and female leisure styles and also leisure patterns specific to students of certain subject types.
Men are more likely to be involved in team sports and to figure as spectators at sporting events.
This may have to do with the fact that they spend substantially more time at the University and learning for their classes. The above can of course be no more than a very brief run-down of the multitude of information generated by this survey.