Abstract
This paper is a case study that aims at characterizing preschoolers daily outdoor play frequency together with the associated factors. The study was conducted among the pre-school aged children whereby a representative sample was picked from various families their parents and guardians were interviewed and given questionnaires to fill.
Introduction
Different families have different frequencies of supervising their children while playing outdoors. Some parents devote much of their time to take their children to go and play and supervise them, other parents take their children to their neighbors while others do not have time and so they rarely take their children to go and play outdoors.
Participants
8950 pre-school children United States were picked for the study. The 8950 were taken from all parts of United States to ensure that it is a good representative sample of the estimated 4 million children. The children were taken as the sample but the people who took part in interviews were their parents and guardians and some few children who could express themselves.
Method
The study used both questionnaires and live interviews of parents and guardians to ensure validity and reliability of the data. Interviews were conducted for a period of one month at different regions of the country using different forms of technology like teleconferencing. Telephone interviews were also used in areas, which were not accessible and were critical for the study. On the hand, the questionnaires were dispatched to all the participants and they sought to give a overall information. The most important question in the question was the number of times that a parent takes his or her child outdoors and monitors them while playing. The research took approximately 6 months that is from preparation, data collection, analysis until compilation of the results. The collection methods such as questionnaires were tested to ensure validity and reliability.
Results
The results of the study shows that the frequency of children going out for play depends on various factors that surrounds the lives of both the children and their parents. This tendency of parents taking their children out for play is affected by factors related to the factors like marital status of the parent as well as nature of responsibilities the parent is burdened with. The nature of the neighbors also contributes to parents not going out with their since they believe that their children are safe if they go out alone with other children to play.Conclusion:
Most of the children in schools never had their parents supervising their outside play. This made the children to go out to play with other children in the neighborhood exposing them to dangers and hazard of the nature. Efforts should be targeted towards promoting the parents taking their children for outside play in order to cater for the physical and mental growth of the children.
References
Frequency of Parent-Supervised Outdoor Play of US Preschool-Aged Children Pooja S. Tandon, MD, MPH; Chuan Zhou, PhD; Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2012;166(8):707-712. doi:10.1001/archpediatrics.2011.1835. http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1149487#METHODS
