sure, it is expected a five-factor measure (due to Being Away being split across two factors) will similarly form. As the level of restorative components can vary across environments, the evaluation of two environments allows a test of discriminant validity. It is proposed that school playgrounds will score higher than the school library on all five restorative components, as well as on a combined potential restorativeness score. In addition, as mentioned earlier, restorative environments differ across people and time. Although time is not captured in this study, differences across people may be considered as broadly reviewed with an examination of response by sex and age. It is expected girls will report the playground (i.e., the more natural environment) as more restorative than boys. As this is a preliminary study involving children with a limited age range, no specific hypotheses are generated regarding developmental differences; however, differences between younger and older children will be examined and reported.
ParticipantsA total of 230 primary school children participated in the study. As five were deleted due to missing data and outliers (detailed in Results), the final sample consisted of 112 boys (age: M=9.9, SD=.97 years) and 113 girls (age: M=9.96, SD=1.01 years) with all children being aged between 8 and 11 years (age: M=9.93, SD=.99 years). This age group was selected as they are able to read and complete questionnaires alone and in Australia, children in Grades 3 to 6 (approximately 8 to 11 years) share the same school (i.e., primary school). There were 74 children aged 8 and 9 forming a younger sub-sample (age: M=8.7, SD=.46 years) and 151 children aged 10 and 11 for the older sub-sample (age: M=10.53, SD=.50 years). Participants were recruited from nine schools across north-east and south-west suburbs of Melbourne (a large south-eastern Australian city) covering a broad range of socio-economic and cultural groups.
Via an active consent procedure, there was a response rate of approximately 20 percent. It should be noted, however, that only three of approximately 1,200 parents approached actively denied permission for their child to participate.
MeasuresThe initial item pool that formed the basis of the Perceived Restorative Components Scale for Children (PRCS-C) was drawn from previously published adult measures. With the permission of the first authors, items were adapted for children, from both the RCS by Laumann et al. (2001) and the PRS by Hartig et al. (1997b).
Items were selected on the basis of the following criteria: they should be representative of Kaplan’s restorative components, applicable to children’s environments (i.e., for this study they would make sense in a school setting), comprehended by children or readily adapted for use with children, and they should have loaded onto appropriate factors in prior research involving the development of adult perceived restorative environment measures. Due to adult research published previously, a smaller initial item pool than otherwise was used, minimizing the disruption to participating schools and the required time and effort of children. A primary school teacher and a primary school environmental educator reviewed the final wording of items for suitability with children.
The adapted items comprised 23 questions representing the factors proposed by ART and more specifically, the five factors as reported by Laumann et al. (2001): seven items for Being Away (three for physical and four for psychological), five items for Fascination, six items for Extent and five items for Compatibility.
To ensure children’s responses were directly related to the environments of interest, the survey included more specific phrasing than has been used with adult samples. For example, prior research with adults (e.g., the RCS) asked participants to complete the following item - “I do something different than I usually do when…” while imagining themselves in an environment presented by video. For the PRCS-C, the name of the specific environments (in italics here for ide