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 measure, 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 p