The Relationship Between Parental Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviour: Australian Primary School -Aged Children and Nature Experiences

ABSTRACT

Children are spending significantly less time outdoors in free play than previous generations, which has implications for children’s development. This study explores parental knowledge, attitudes and the time children spend in outdoor free play. Parents or caregivers of children aged between five and nine years old (N = 82) completed an online mixed methods survey. Data collected included knowledge of the benefits of outdoor play, attitudes towards outdoor play and time children spend outdoors. Participant’s knowledge varied between 1 and 19 benefits of outdoor free play (mean = 7.54). Participants had a positive attitude towards outdoor recreation, demonstrating a statistically significant positive correlation with time their child spends in outdoor free play on a non-school and school day. Findings contribute to research within the Australian context regarding the influence that parental attitude has on children’s engagement with nature, allowing for potential programmes around parental attitudes, to support greater time outdoors.

KEYWORDS:

• outdoor free play
• childhood development
• parental influence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tessa McHugh

Tessa McHugh [email protected] Tessa has a Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) qualification and has undertaken programs for research, guided by classes about research methods, statistics and ethical considerations in research.

Carla Litchfield

Carla Litchfield [email protected] Carla is the head of school of Psychology at UniSA and has psychology research experience. Carla is the founder and leader of the Conservation Psychology and Applied Animal Behaviour Research Group. Carla has published dozens of manuscripts in the area of Conservation Psychology and has extensive experience in human-nature relationships.

Elissa Pearson

Elissa Pearson [email protected] Elissa Pearson has a PhD in psychology and her research is grounded in the application of psychological knowledge and methodologies to contemporary societal issues, including better understanding our relationships with the natural world, addressing the escalating biodiversity crisis and investigating the implications of our disconnection with nature on human health and development.

Brianna Le Busque

Brianna Le Busque [email protected] Brianna has a PhD in Psychology and experience in mixed method research in the areas of conservation psychology and connection to nature.