 teachers' perceptions of the benefits of play, healthy (or manageable) vs. unhealthy risk and the consequences of preventing children from engaging in play and healthy risk taking. Schools are offered compensation for the time the teachers are participating in the sessions.
The control schools participate in standard recess, and they do not have access to the unstructured materials or to risk reframing.
Outcome measures and schedule of the study
Stadiometer and scales
Researcher with child
Height and weight
Actigraph accelerometer 1
Devices worn by children
Counts, and minutes in sedentary and moderate to vigorous activity
Activity Diary 2
Palm pilots responded on by parents
Activities undertaken after school
Parent and teacher reports
Social skills and problem behaviour
Researcher with child, and teacher reports
Feelings of competence
Physical activity during school days
Actigraph accelerometers (GT3X, http://www.theactigraph.com) are worn on the participating children's right hip, on the iliac bone, on top of clothing and fastened with an elastic waist band. A researcher attaches the accelerometers at 9.00 AM and removes them at 3.00 PM for 5 consecutive school days. Movement is measured in three planes at 5 second epochs.
Data are downloaded from the accelerometers using the product-coupled software ActiLife and stored as .dat files to be used in subsequent analyses. To measure the level of physical activity, total accelerometer counts, as well as minutes and percent of time spent in sedentary, light, moderate and vigorous physical activities are calculated, using a custom-made macro (Stewart Trost). The cut-points for levels of physical defined by Evenson et al.  are used. Accelerometer non-wear time is defined as a count of 0 for 10 consecutive minutes .
Children's activities after school
We collect information about activities during after-school hours (between 3.30 PM and 7.00 PM) in both baseline and post-test sessions using a real-time activity diary. Responses to the activity diary are recorded at three random times for each of 4 consecutive week days. The activity diary consists of 12 questions (9 multiple choice, 3 Visual Analogue Scales [VAS]). The multiple choice questions determine who is recording the information, what the child is doing and using, who the child is with, if the television is on and whether they are indoors or outdoors. The VAS questions are used to estimate, 1) activity level, 2) frequency of movement and 3) intensity of involvement in an activity. Questionnaire items were developed from literature on children's after school activities and in conjunction with a workgroup of paediatric health care professionals, researchers working with young children, and parents of children in the relevant age group. The activities were chosen to represent activities in which 5- to 7-year-olds commonly engage during after-school hours. The aim was to create a questionnaire that could be answered in 1 to 2 minutes. Pilot testing revealed response time ranged from 0.5 to 3 minutes, with a shorter response time as respondents became increasingly familiar with the questions.
Parents record responses to diary questions on a Palm Pilot Z22 (Palm Inc., Sunnyvale, CA) loaded with Experience Sampling Program (ESP) software http://www.experience-sampling.org. For each diary entry, the Palm emits a signal that continues for 3 minutes before the device is switched off and the entry is marked as a non-response. Once the survey commences, a 3-minute lag of non-activity is allowed to accommodate interruptions before switching off. Any questions completed prior to the non-activity are saved.
Parents are instructed in use of the Palm in a personal meeting with the researchers or through a step-by-step instruction sheet included with the Palm pilots when they are distributed to the parents. Parents are provided with a contact number, should they encounter any problems with the devices. On the morning of first day of data collection, researchers activate the software and place the devices in the participating children's s