A self-report play skills questionnaire: Technical development

A play skills self-report questionnaire in game form was administered to 72 children aged between 4 years 10 months and 7 years 6 months. The same questions were answered by a parent and teacher of each child. The aim was to establish how children's perceptions of their play skills differed from those of their parents and teachers. Twenty-two children were retested after 1 month to examine test-retest reliability. The influence of age and gender on play self-report and on parent and teacher report, and the effect of position in the family, were also examined. Results indicated that children's views of their play skills were different from adults. Child and parent absolute agreement was significant to P = 0.05 on 6 questions, and child and teacher on 1. There was a significant positive correlation between means of parent and teacher responses (r = 0.42, P = 0.0025) but not betweeen child and parent or child and teacher. Some consistency over time in the children's own view was found (7 questions showed significant agreement to P = 0.05). There was no significant interaction between age, gender and total score, but a significant gender difference for teacher mean score (z =-2.31, P = 0.02) was identified. Means of parents with only one child and those with the subject and one younger child were significantly different (t = 3.48, d.f. = 23, P = 0.002). These results suggest that further investigation of methods for children to self-report their play skills is warranted.