The after school period is potentially a "critical window" for promoting physical activity in children. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore children's perceptions of the factors influencing their engagement in physical activity during the after school period as the first phase in the development of a questionnaire.
METHODS:
Fifty four South Australian children aged 10-13 years participated in same gender focus groups. Transcripts, field notes and activity documents were analysed using content analysis. Through an inductive thematic approach, data were coded and categorised into perceived barriers and facilitators according to a social ecological model.
RESULTS:
Children identified a number of factors, including: safety in the neighbourhood and home settings; distance to and from places; weather; availability of time; perceived competence; enjoyment of physical activity; peer influence; and parent influence. New insights into bullying and teasing by peers and fear of dangerous animals and objects were revealed by the children.
CONCLUSIONS:
In this study, hearing children's voices allowed the emergence of factors which may not be exposed using existing surveys. These findings are grounded in children's perceptions and therefore serve as a valuable contribution to the existing literature, potentially leading to improved intervention and questionnaire design.
Psychol Assess. 2012 Mar;24(1):156-65. doi: 10.1037/a0025178. Epub 2012 Jan 16.
Development of a measure of the experience of being bullied in youth.
Hunt C, Peters L, Rapee RM.
Source
School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. caroline.hunt@sydney.edu.au
Abstract
The Personal Experiences Checklist (PECK) was developed to provide a multidimensional assessment of a young person's personal experience of being bullied that covered the full range of bullying behaviors, including covert relational forms of bullying and cyber bullying. A sample of 647 school children were used to develop the scale, and a 2nd sample of 218 children completed the PECK and a battery of measures of bullying (including peer nomination), anxiety, depression, and self-esteem, to provide validity evidence. Test-retest reliability was assessed in a further sample of 78 students. Four factors emerged from a principal axis factoring consistent with the domains of relational-verbal bullying, cyber bullying, physical bullying, andbullying based on culture and were confirmed with confirmatory factor analysis. The data also supported a higher order bullying factor with direct effects on these 4 factors. All PECK scales showed good to excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's α range = .78-.91) and adequate test-retest reliability (range r = .61-.86). Most, but not all, expected relations were found with alternative methods of assessing bullying and measures of psychopathology. Taken together, the PECK provides a promising comprehensive and behaviorally focused dimensional measure of bullying.
J Psychiatr Res. 2012 Mar;46(3):290-7. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2011.12.004. Epub 2012 Jan 9.
The interaction of social risk factors and HPA axis dysregulation in predicting emotional symptoms of five- and six-year-old children.
von Klitzing K, Perren S, Klein AM, Stadelmann S, White LO, Groeben M, Holsboer-Trachsler E, Brand S, Hatzinger M.
Source
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, University of Leipzig, Liebigstr. 20a, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
We examined the links of social relational (family environment and peer victimization) and neuroendocrinological (HPA axis dysregulation) risk factors to children's emotional symptoms. We placed special emphasis on the joint effects of these risk factors with respect to the emergence and course of the emotional symptoms.
METHODS:
One hundred and sixty-six children were interviewed (Berkeley Puppet Interview) at age 5 and 6. Teachers and parents completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Parents completed the Family Environment Scales. Peer victimization was assessed by teacher and child reports. Children's saliva cortisol was measured before and after a highly structured story completion task which targeted their cognitive emotional representations of family conflicts.
RESULTS:
In the cross-sectional analyses, negative family environment, peer victimization, and cortisol increase during the story completion task independently contributed to the variance of emotional symptoms. There was a significant interaction effect between family environment and cortisol increase: those six-year-olds who had experienced an unfavorable family environment only showed high levels of emotional symptoms if they exhibited a cortisol increase during the story completion task. In the longitudinal analysis, peer victimization at age 5 predicted an increase of emotional symptoms at age 6, but only for those children who exhibited a blunted cortisol response a year earlier.
CONCLUSIONS:
Negative family environment and peer victimization proved to be independently associated with emotional symptoms. HPA axis reactivity differentially moderated these associations. Therapeutic strategies should take the interaction between negative relational experiences and biological susceptibility to stress into account.
J Intellect Dev Disabil. 2012 Mar;37(1):65-82. doi: 10.3109/13668250.2011.648610. Epub 2012 Feb 3.
