e.g., I am away from my obligations). This empirical finding is in keeping with Kaplan’s original definitions of Being Away referring to either physical or psychological aspects. The other factors were as proposed by ART: Extent (e.g., the elements here go together), Fascination (e.g., this setting has many things that I wonder about) and Compatibility (e.g., I am capable of meeting the challenge of this setting).
Both these measures, however, have been developed for use with adult participants. The goal of this study was to develop and evaluate a measure of restorative components appropriate for the use with children. Consistent with Hartig et al.'s (1997b) goals, the measure for children should capture the components of ART, as well as differentiate environments that differ theoretically in their level of restorativeness. Therefore, two familiar, everyday environments were evaluated by each child in this study; that is, their school playground and their school library. These environments were compared to their school classroom. A school library is clearly more similar to the classroom (i.e., indoors, chairs and tables, used during class time, few natural elements) than the school playground (i.e., outdoors, play equipment, used during breaks, more natural elements) and therefore would theoretically be perceived as less restorative.
The decision to focus on children’s school environments is based on theoretical and social considerations. First, for an environment to be restorative it needs to be accessible (Kaplan 1995). Given the wide reaching changes in recent decades and, in turn, increased parental reluctance to permit children to play unsupervised, opportunities for children to be able to wander from home to local fields or parks have decreased (Kellert 2002). Second, a number of studies have indicated that children aged six through 12 more often spend time in nearby or familiar places rather than unusual or spectacular places (Moore 1986; Nabhan and Trimble 1994; Sobel 1990). Schoolyards may be one of the few open areas that children have available to them on an everyday basis. Finally, as school attendance is compulsory, children not only attend school environments regularly but for lengthy periods; that is, up to seven years at the same campus (i.e., Prep to grade 6 in Australia). As proposed previously (Faber Taylor et al. 2001), the combination of accessibility and the academic goals of education systems suggests the importance of considering the perceived and actual restorativeness of school environments.
Sex differences across restorative environment components have yet to be examined with adult samples. Prior research with children, however, has reported sex differences in environments close to home. For example, studies have demonstrated associations between views of nature from home and attentional benefits for girls (Faber Taylor et al. 2001; Faber Taylor, Kuo, and Sullivan 2002), but not boys, possibly because boys may not play as close to home (Faber Taylor et al. 2001). Bagot and Gullone (2003) report that girls indicated higher positive affect from natural stimuli (e.g., being with animals, activities in natural settings) than boys did. Although natural elements and stimuli are not specifically captured in this study, and the environments of interest are away from the home setting, such research suggests sex differences could be expected in school settings as well.
As research into restorative environments has focused on adult samples, there has not been an examination of developmental differences in perceived restoration potential or attention restoration to date. Research has however revealed differences across developmental stages in environmental perception and preferences (e.g., Balling and Falk 1982; Bernaldez, Gallardo, and Abello 1995; Herzog, Herbert, Kaplan, and Crooks 2000; Malinowski and Thurber 1996; Zube, Pitt, and Evans 1995), suggesting differences in perceived restoration may be revealed with children of different ages.
As the RCS will be used as a base for the children’s adapted mea