On children's independent mobility: the interplay of demographic, environmental, and psychosocial factors

Abstract

In the past 50 years, a marked reduction has occurred in European and North American children's freedom of movement and outdoor play. Using a structural equation model, the present study investigates the interaction between personal, environmental, and psychosocial factors that affect children's independent mobility. The study involved 313 mothers of 8–10-year-old Italian children. The results supported the hypothesized model: the age of the child, the maternal perception of social danger, and positive potentiality of outdoor autonomy were the most influential variables on children's independent mobility, measured as an index. Further, the maternal perceptions mediated the influence of the other demographic, psychosocial, and environmental variables on independent mobility.

Keywords:

• children's outdoor mobility
• children's independent mobility
• social danger perception
• potentiality of outdoor autonomy
• structural equation model

Notes

Items 3, 11, 15, and 17.

Originally, we also constructed a third scale to measure the perception of traffic danger, called The Traffic Danger Perception scale. However, the scale had an unsatisfactory Cronbach's alpha (.64) and item-total correlations were too low for different items (<.30). In a later study (Prezza et al. 2010), the scale was substantially modified and attained full reliability.