Questions
ARTICLE ANALYSIS
Problematizing “Play-for-Health” Discourses Through Children’s Photo-Elicited
Narratives
Summary
This research tackles the subject of children’s play in the light of the apparent declining opportunities for children to engage in active, unstructured, pleasurable and sheer purposeless play. A related concern in this declining play engagement among children is the problem of obesity spawned by a more sedentary lifestyle among children for lack of physical exercise that comes with play activities.
Central to this research is the consideration of children’s play as those activities that promote physical health as much as the social, cognitive, intellectual and psychological formation of children. While there is a lot of public discussion on the necessity to engage children in active play, and notably underscoring that much of the focus of active play engagement has actually drawn away from the unstructured and free play that characterized child development in the past, the authors in this research proposed to look into the subject of children’s play from the perspective of children themselves.
In this research, the authors invited 25 English- and French-speaking boys and girls aged 7 to 11 years old living in Montreal, Canada. The researchers conducted photography and interview sessions with the children to examine how they represent active play. The research yielded the conclusion that for children, play is considered an end in itself, play is more than just active play and there is ambivalent attitude towards scheduled play. This is clearly in contrast to institutional interventions to redirect active play towards scheduled and adult-supervised activities that take out the element of spontaneity for children as more primary concerns such as child safety become paramount.
Research Design
The research made use of qualitative analysis, mainly through the conduct of interview sessions and focus group-style sessions (photography sessions), in resolving the research question. The researchers admit that their research design is based on a biased sampling based on some socio-economic indicator and that the sample size simply considered what would be sufficient to establish some diversity in play perspective among the participants. Apparently, the sample size was bench-marked with similar exploratory studies done previously on related subjects.
Offhand, there is probably need to conduct a research that has a wider scope to conclusively establish the initial findings in this study. This is the drawback of qualitative research although for the research problem at hand it may be the most appropriate. A quantitative analysis which would be more inclusive, say conducting a survey analysis of play preference of a bigger sample of children, will likely allow for a more generalized conclusion. In the case of this research, its qualitative design applied to a non-random sample of children would probably merit the research as a case study rather than an unbiased research where a valid general conclusion can be drawn about children’s perspective on children’s play.
As for the ethical issues in the research design and application, this aspect was handled properly. The consent of both participants and their parents were secured and it would be safe to hazard that briefing protocols were implemented. The approval of the Ethics Committee of the University of Montreal Health Research for the conduct of this research counts as a plus to the propriety in the conduct of the research and the engagement of children as focus of the study.
Bibliography
Alexander, Stephanie A., Frohlich, Katherine L. and Fusco, Caroline. 2014. Problematizing “Play-for-Health” Discourses Through Narratives. Qualitative Health Research, October 2014 vol. 24. Retrieved from qhr.sagepub.com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org.
