Children’s Perceptions of Their Play: Scale Development and Validation

Abstract

A wealth of research has been conducted on children’s play, yet the vast majority has relied on others’ accounts to define, describe, and characterize their play. This study presents a successful effort to generate a scale to measure third through fifth grade children’s perceptions of their play. Items were generated from children’s unrestricted accounts of how they viewed their play, and the reliability (internal consistency, stability), content, and construct (convergent and discriminant) validity of the Children’s Perceptions of Their Play (CPTP) scale were all high. Across two independent samples, children defined their play in terms of six factors: opportunities to choose what to do and with whom (Child’s Choice), play interactions with friends (Social Play), structured recreation activities in which they chose to participate (Planned Activities), their involvement and absorption in play (Engagement), how physically active they are (Active Play), and freedom from school obligations when they were able to play as they desired (Free Time). No differences between boys and girls, the three grade levels, or children attending public versus private school were found.

Dispositional playfulness in young children: A cross-sectional and longitudinal examination of the psychometric properties of a new child self-reported playfulness scale and associations with social behaviour

“…Indeed, it has been shown that from preschool, children are able to articulate a clear understanding of the distinction between play and not-play (Howard & McInnes, 2013;Wing, 1995), and report on their own play behaviours (Rothlein & Brett, 1987). While older children are reliably able to report using questionnaire methods directly on their own play (e.g., Barnett, 2013), and young adults can report on their own playfulness (Barnett, 2007). Nonetheless young children have yet to be asked to report on the degree to which they conceptualise themselves as playful, that is report on their own playful self-concept.…”

Conceptualising physical playfulness

“…Typically, playfulness research in adolescents and adults has focussed on a range of cognitive, social and emotional aspects such as intelligence, humour, light-heartedness, other-directedness, being spontaneous or being whimsical (Glynn & Webster, 1992;Proyer & Jehle, 2013;Shen, Chick, & Zinn, 2014). There has also been some consideration regarding active leisure activities (Barnett, 2013;Staempfli, 2007). The aim of playfulness research in adolescents and adults concerns mostly with the ability to engage with reality flexibly.…”

Parents’ views of preschool chıldren on eba and other distance education activities during the covid-19 outbreak

“…Buradan hareketle, okul öncesi çocukların özellikle psikolojik desteğe her zamankinden daha fazla ihtiyaç duydukları için, bu dönemde oyunlar, eğlenceli etkinlikler ile EBA'yı zenginleştirmenin önemli olduğu söylenebilir. Barnett (2013) oyunun işlevi, çocuğun çevresinde yaşanan olumsuz ve travmatik olaylardan kaynaklanan duygularla baş edebilmesine yardımcı olmak olduğunu vurgulamıştır. Özellikle, okul öncesi çocuklarının pek çoğunun süreçten olumsuz olarak etkilendikleri Covid-19 salgını döneminde içeriğin zenginleştirilmesinin son derece önemli olacağı ebeveyn görüşleri doğrultusunda vurgulanabilir.…”