Neighborhood Influence on Parenting Practices Regarding Youth Outdoor Play

Parental constraint of outdoor play may be fueling unhealthy emotional and physical
development in today's children and adolescents. Time spent outdoors is a key determinant of
unstructured play and overall physical activity levels, both of which are crucial to optimal
development in youth. Modern barriers - such as crime, poor social ties among neighbors, and
unsafe physical environments - constrain parental practices and reduce opportunities for
outdoor play in children and youth. Low levels of perceived collective efficacy, a measure of
perceived neighborhood cohesion and the collective capacity to solve neighborhood problems,
has been proposed as a social environmental factor that constrains outdoor play by parents
either attempting to avoid potentially dangerous situations or using defensive behavior by
upgrading security measures. Moreover, incivilities in the neighborhood physical environment
(e.g. litter, graffiti, blighted property) may influence parents' perceived collective
efficacy. Consequently, a child's ability to achieve the recommended minimum of 60 minutes of
daily physical activity may be limited by a complex interaction between neighborhood social
and physical environmental factors and the extent to which parents respond by constraining
offspring outdoor play. The central hypothesis of this research is that modifiable factors in
the neighborhood social and physical environment result in parental constraint of offspring
outdoor play, which reduces overall physical activity during critical years of development.
This research will use qualitative methods to generate a comprehensive understanding of how
and which environmental factors play a crucial role in parental constraint of outdoor play
and promote low levels of within-neighborhood physical activity. This ancillary study will
recruit 32 parents/guardians of participants from the parent study, Translational
Investigation of Growth and Everyday Routines in Kids (TIGER Kids) Study (USDA
3092-51000-056-04A), to participate in in-depth interviews. My ultimate goal is to use
knowledge gained from this ancillary study to generate community-based interventions that
will target neighborhood factors to successfully reduce parental constraints on outdoor play.