Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Children's physical activity is in decline, and it is thought that this is because children are spending too little time playing outdoors. There is very little information on how often children play outdoors, as this is difficult to measure. We conducted a survey with 514 parent-child pairs and asked parents about their perception of the safety of their neighbourhood and how often their children play outside. We found that parents who thought their neighbourhood was safe also reported that their children played outside more often. This is consistent with our hypothesis and suggests that we may need to improve parents' perception of neighborhood safety in order to encourage children to play outside more often. However, there are likely other complex factors that are involved in this association, and further research into this area is warranted.