Abstract
Research on children’s risky play and young children’s risk taking is a relatively new research area that has drawn the attention of many researchers in the last decades. Nevertheless, to our knowledge, no earlier studies have measured the prevalence of risky play when children can freely choose what to play, with whom, and where. Most research on risky play has also exclusively focused on outdoor play. This study aims at examining the occurrence and characteristics of children’s risky play, indoors and outdoors, in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions. Children (N = 80) were observed in two-minute sequences during periods of the day when they were free to choose what to do. The data consists of 1878 randomly recorded two-minute videos, which were coded second by second for the occurrence of several categories of risky play. Results revealed that risky play was registered in 10.3% of the total data material. The data is further analysed to explore distribution among different types of risky play, as well as differences between gender, age and environment (indoors vs. outdoors).
Highlights
A growing number of studies show that children’s opportunities for free play have decreased in the last few decades
Prevalence and characteristics of risky play categories should be investigated further, potentially with indepth, qualitative analysis of characteristics and including younger children. Another aim of this study was to look at how the frequency of risky play is associated with individuals, gender, age, and the environment
Conflict of interest All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. This is the first study, to our knowledge, that sets out to systematically measure the prevalence of risky play in situations where children were free to choose what to play, and to further investigate how the frequency of risky play is associated with individuals, gender, age, and the environment
Summary
A growing number of studies show that children’s opportunities for free play have decreased in the last few decades (see e.g. Freeman 1995; Lester and Maudsley 2006; Brussoni et al 2012; Moss 2012; Gray 2011). Intense exhilaration is one of the potential rewards of engaging in risky situations (Cook 1993; Cook et al 1999). Feelings such as fun, enjoyment, excitement, thrill, pride, achievement, and good self-esteem when mastering new and challenging tasks are found to be a driving force and rewarding experience when children engage in risky play (Sandseter 2010b, a; Coster and Gleave 2008; Stephenson 2003). Risk-taking in play includes both fear and excitement, and this ambiguous feeling is what children seek in their play (Cook 1993; Aldis 1975; Cook et al 1999; Sandseter 2010a; Coster and Gleave 2008; Stephenson 2003). There is reason to believe that children will seek this kind of play, no matter
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