ArticleBMC public health2021
Development and evaluation of a new measure of children's play: the Children's Play Scale (CPS).
Article in BMC public health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Psychometric Properties of Physical Activity Questionnaires for Children and Adolescents: An Updated Systematic Review.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2025Pooled it
- Internalizing and externalizing symptoms in children during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic mixed studies review.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Pooled it
- Early outdoor play predicts trajectories of child mental health in a population-based cohort.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Article
- Children's independent mobility in Japan: travelling to, returning from, and playing within local parks.Health promotion international · 2026Article
- Article
- Seven core qualities of good vs. bad play? A principal component analysis of 504 children's play memories and development of a Play Qualities Inventory.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Parental tolerance of risk and associations to adventurous play in British preschool-aged children.Preventive medicine reports · 2025Article
- Scoping review of children's and youth's outdoor play publications in Canada.Health promotion and chronic disease prevention in Canada : research, policy and practice · 2023Article
- Children's Play and Independent Mobility in 2020: Results from the British Children's Play Survey.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Early Childhood Teachers of Color in New York City: heightened stress, lower quality of life, declining health, and compromised sleep amidst COVID-19.Early childhood research quarterlyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThere is increasing recognition of the importance of children's play from a public health perspective, given the links between play and children's physical and mental health. The present research aimed to develop and evaluate a new parent-report questionnaire that measures the time children spend playing across a range of places and includes a supplement to evaluate how adventurously children play.
methodsThe questionnaire was developed with input from a diverse group of parents and experts in children's play. It was designed to yield a range of metrics including time spent playing per year, time spent playing outside, time spent playing in nature and level of adventurous play. The reliability of the questionnaire was then evaluated with 245 parents (149 mothers, 96 fathers) of 154 children aged 5-11 years. All participants completed the measure at time 1. At time 2, an average of 20 days later, 184 parents (111 mothers and 73 fathers) of 99 children completed the measure again.
resultsCross-informant agreement, evaluated using Concordance Correlation Coefficients (CCCs), ranged from 0.36 to 0.51. These fall in the poor to moderate range and are largely comparable to cross-informant agreement on other measures. Test-retest reliability for mothers was good (range 0.67-0.76) for time spent playing metrics. For fathers, test-retest reliability was lower (range 0.39-0.63). For both parents the average level of adventurous play variable had relatively poor test retest reliability (mothers = 0.49, fathers = 0.42). This variable also showed a significant increase from time 1 to time 2. This instability over time may be due to the timing of the research in relation to the Covid-19 lockdown and associated shifts in risk perception.
conclusionsThe measure will be of value in future research focusing on the public health benefits and correlates of children's play as well as researchers interested in children's outdoor play and play in nature specifically. The development of the measure in collaboration with parents and experts in children's play is a significant strength. It will be of value for future research to further validate the measure against play diaries or activity monitors.
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