Active Play

The physical proximity and collaborative interaction styles between parents and children (such as holding hands, pointing at play equipment, or walking side-by-side) are often used as indicators of parental engagement and shared attention during outdoor recreation. A developmental psychologist wants to conduct a study using the naturalistic observation method to investigate this by studying the physical interactions of parent-child dyads near a newly opened community adventure playground. Behaviour was observed every 20 minutes during an afternoon session from 2 pm to 5 pm.