Parental encouragement is positively associated with outdoor active play outside of school hours among 7–12 year olds

Introduction

Regular physical activity is important for children’s health (Janssen & Leblanc, 2010). It is recommended that 5–17 year old children accumulate at least 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) daily (Tremblay et al., 2011). Worryingly, objective physical activity measures suggest that the majority of children in the United States and other developed countries do not meet this recommendation (Colley et al., 2011; Hallal et al., 2012; Troiano et al., 2008). The primary domains in which children accumulate their MVPA are by participating in organized sport (e.g., soccer game, swimming lessons, dance class), physical education class and other structured school activities, active transport (e.g., walking and cycling), and active play (e.g., tag, road hockey, hide and seek) (Veitch, Salmon & Ball, 2010). Of these four domains, it has been argued that active play is the domain where children are performing the poorest (Active Healthy Kids Canada, 2012). This is concerning because in addition to influencing physical health, active play provides cognitive, social, and emotional benefits through the development of creativity, problem solving, and conflict resolution (Brockman, Jago & Fox, 2011).

A limited amount of research has examined the determinants of the active play domain of physical activity. One potential determinant is parental support, and an important aspect of parental support is encouragement (Gustafson & Rhodes, 2006). In the context of active play, encouragement could consist of parents giving verbal cues for their child to engage in play such as telling them to go to the park or to ride their bicycle with friends in the neighborhood. Although several studies have shown that parental encouragement is associated with total MVPA among children (Anderssen & Wold, 1992; Biddle & Goudas, 1996; McGuire et al., 2002; Pugliese & Tinsley, 2007; Welk, Wood & Morss, 2003), we are aware of only a single study which has linked parental encouragement and the active play domain of physical activity. That study reported that the relative odds of playing active games most of the time during the school recess period was 0.70 (95% CI [0.46–1.04]) in 12–14 year old children who received low parental encouragement by comparison to children who received high parental encouragement (Hohepa et al., 2007). The influence of parental encouragement on active play outside of school settings has not been established. This is an important gap in the literature. Parents have limited control of their children during the school day and should have a much greater influence on their child’s behaviors outside of school hours.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether parental encouragement for outdoor active play is associated with outdoor active play performed outside school hours within 7–12 year olds. It was hypothesized that parental encouragement would be positively associated with outdoor active play. The findings from this study could direct future interventions and could provide parents with insights on approaches they could use to improve the physical activity levels and ultimately the health of their children.

Materials and Methods

Results

Descriptive statistics for the 514 children are in Table 1. Approximately half were male (49%) and lived in suburbs or subdivisions (47%). The majority were non-Hispanic White (69%) and lived in a dual parent household (85%). Table 2 shows the distribution of responses to the parental encouragement questions. Approximately one third of parents reported that they encouraged their child to play outdoors when the weather is nice and to play in their yard/driveway on a daily basis. Approximately 13% encouraged their child to be active by using resources in the neighborhood and to walk/bike in their neighborhood on a daily basis. Table 3 shows the distribution of responses to the items addressing the frequency of outdoor active play. Approximately 22% of parents reported that their child played in the yard on a daily basis. For the other 6 outdoor play locations, <10% of parents reported that their child played there on a daily basis.

The mean outdoor active play frequency score within the entire sample was 13.3 (SE = 0.5). There was a significant increase in this score across parental encouragement quintiles as follows: 6.0 (0.7) in quintile 1, 9.8 (0.6) in quintile 2, 11.4 (0.6) in quintile 3, 16.2 (0.9) in quintile 4, and 23.3 (1.3) in quintile 5. As shown in Fig. 1, after adjusting for covariates there was an almost threefold difference in the mean outdoor active play frequency score when comparing the lowest and highest parental encouragement quintiles (7.8 vs. 20.4). Associations between parental encouragement and outdoor active play are further shown in Table 4. The final multivariate regression model indicated that there was a 12.7 (1.2) point difference in the outdoor play frequency score between the lowest and highest parental encouragement quintiles. Covariates retained in the final multivariate model were the number of siblings, parental involvement, and the unsafe roads, traffic calming, safe for children, and crime risk factors.

The mean frequency score for total physical activity outside of school (outdoor active play + active transportation + organized sport) within all 514 children was 24.3 (SE = 1.0). This score increased significantly across parental encouragement quintiles as follows: 10.5 (1.1) in quintile 1, 18.8 (1.3) in quintile 2, 19.5 (1.5) in quintile 3, 28.7 (2.1) in quintile 4, and 43.7 (2.9) in quintile 5. The final multivariate regression model indicated that there was a 21.1 (2.4) point difference in the total physical activity frequency score between the lowest and highest parental encouragement quintiles (Table 5). Age, parental structure, number of siblings, education of the parent completing the survey, independent mobility, parental facilitation, and the unsafe roads, traffic calming, safe for children, and crime risk factors were the covariates retained in the final multivariate model.

Discussion

The key finding of this study is that parental encouragement was a strong, positive correlate of outdoor active play. In fact, of all the variables examined in the multivariate model, parental encouragement was the most strongly associated with the frequency of outdoor play. After adjusting for covariates, children who were encouraged the most played outdoors three times more frequently than children who were encouraged the least. Parental encouragement for outdoor active play was similarly associated with total physical activity outside of school hours, which implies that encouragement for and participation in outdoor active play did not negatively influence other domains of physical activity.

Consistent with our findings for active play, previous studies found that parental encouragement is associated with child’s total physical activity (Anderssen & Wold, 1992; Biddle & Goudas, 1996; Pugliese & Tinsley, 2007; Welk, Wood & Morss, 2003). Furthermore, Hohepa et al. (2007) found that perceived encouragement by parents was associated with active games played during school recess among 12–14 year olds. This is an indicator of active play because recess activities are highly unstructured and self-directed by children. However, school recess is supervised by teachers and/or other caregivers and not under parental control, and therefore there may not be a direct casual association between parental encouragement and play during recess. Our study focused on the role of parent encouragement on active play outside of the school setting and this would have included outdoor active play that was supervised by parents and unsupervised play that was allowed by parents. Our findings suggest that the positive association between parental encouragement and outdoor active play is not a function of children substituting active play for other domains of physical activity such as organized sport and active transportation. Thus, parental encouragement for active play should benefit the child’s total physical activity level.

Parental encouragement for outdoor active play in the form of simple verbal cues could influence children’s physical activity in a number of ways. It could have a direct influence by inspiring children to spend their free time participating in active play rather than in sedentary pursuits such as screen time. It could indirectly influence active play by impacting their child’s self-efficacy (Gustafson & Rhodes, 2006; Sallis et al., 1992), perceived competence (Biddle & Goudas, 1996; Brustad, 1993; Welk, Wood & Morss, 2003), attitudes (Sallis, Prochaska & Taylor, 2000; Salmon et al., 2005) and beliefs (Heitzler et al., 2006), all of which are known determinants of physical activity.

Although intervention studies are needed, the results from this study suggest that getting parents to provide more encouragement for active play would be an effective strategy for increasing children’s active play levels. Interventions may want to target improving parent’s beliefs about the importance of active play and alleviating the safety concerns they have about letting their child play outdoors. For many parents, structured and organized activities are seen as a means of providing their children with opportunities for enrichment, which has led to busier schedules and less free time for play, an unstructured and unorganized activity that is often perceived as having little value (Ginsburg, 2007). Despite dwindling crime and injury rates, many parents perceive that it is unsafe for children to play outdoors unsupervised (Carver, Timperio & Crawford, 2008b; Janssen, 2014). For instance, an Australian study reported that ∼80% of parents of 10–12 year olds are concerned about strangers and automobile traffic in their neighborhood (Timperio et al., 2004). These perceived dangers are negatively associated with children’s outdoor physical activity (Carver, Timperio & Crawford, 2008b; Heitzler et al., 2006; Page et al., 2010; Veitch, Salmon & Ball, 2010; Wen et al., 2009). The association between perceived safety and child physical activity may be mediated by independent mobility, which refers to the extent to which children are allowed to roam outdoors unsupervised. A limited independent mobility is associated with a lack of active play (Prezza et al., 2001; Schoeppe et al., 2013).

Strengths of our study include the specificity of measures (e.g., measures of parental encouragement and child physical activity that were specific to outdoor active play) and the consideration of individual, family, and neighborhood level covariates. This study is limited by the cross-sectional design which does not enable us to establish the temporal nature of the observed associations. Also, all of the data for this study was collected in late fall. Children’s total physical activity differs across seasons (Carson & Spence, 2010), and it is possible that the relationships between parental encouragement and outdoor active play reported on here may have been different had the data been collected at another time of year. In addition, this study relied on parental-reports, which would have led to misclassification of the study variables, particularly the outdoor active play frequency score. It is possible that parents who encouraged play more frequently were particularly biased in their responses to the outdoor active play frequency questions, which would have led to differential misclassification and overestimated associations between parental encouragement and outdoor active play. Furthermore, we did not consider features of the physical environment (e.g., parks, playgrounds, green space) and it is possible that the observed relationships could have been confounded by these features. Finally, the observed associations could have been influenced by a common method variance (i.e., variance attributable to the measurement method and not the constructs the measures represent).

Conclusion

These findings suggest that parental encouragement for outdoor play in the form of verbal cues is associated with outdoor active play. Future research in this topic area would benefit from using a longitudinal design and obtaining objective measures of physical activity. Intervention studies are also needed to determine effective approaches for increasing parental encouragement for outdoor play. It is hoped that the findings from this study will provide information that could be directed toward parents on strategies they could use to increase their child’s physical activity.

Supplemental Information