The prevalence of risky play in young children’s indoor and outdoor free play.

The study investigates the prevalence and characteristics of children's risky play, indoors and outdoors, in kindergarten. The research questions are: 1. How prevalent is risky play during free play in Norwegian kindergartens? 2. In what way is the frequency of risky play associated with factors such as individual differences, gender, age and environment (outdoor/indoor)?

The results showed that risky play was recorded in 10.3 percent of the total data material. Girls and boys engaged equally in risky play, in contrast to previous suggestions that boys are more attracted to this type of play. Another interesting finding was that although children engaged more in risky play outdoors than indoors, the amount of risky play indoors was higher than expected. The results show that risky play is attractive to children, and that, given that they have the opportunity to choose freely, they engage in this type of play to the same extent as in other typical games, such as symbolic play.

Data collection took place using video observations of 80 children in indoor and outdoor environments during free play in three Norwegian kindergartens. Data collection was undertaken on two occasions of free play in which the children could decide what they wanted to do, where they wanted to be and who they wanted to interact with. The children 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 two-minute videos, which were encoded second by second for different categories of risky play.

Sandseter, E. B. H., Kleppe, R., & Sando, O. J. (2021). “The prevalence of risky play in young children’s indoor and outdoor free play”. Early Childhood Education Journal, 49:303-312.