JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Research indicates that risky play benefits children’s risk assessment and risk management skills, and offers several positive health effects such as resilience, social skills, physical activity, well-being and involvement. There are also indications that the lack of risky play and autonomy increases the likelihood of anxiety. Despite its well-documented importance, and the willingness of children to engage in risky play, this type of play is increasingly restricted. Assessing long-term effects of risky play has been problematic because of ethical issues with conducting studies designed to allow or encourage children to take physical risks with the potential of injury.

Objective:

The Virtual Risk Management (ViRMa) project aims to examine children’s development of risk management skills through risky play. To accomplish this, the project first aims to develop and validate ethically appropriate data collection tools such as virtual reality (VR), eye-tracking and motion capturing, psychometric scales and questionnaires to provide insight into how children assess and handle risk situations. The project then plans to use these methods to explore how children’s past risky play experiences are associated with their risk management.

Methods:

The ViRMa project includes three stages. Stage 1 is a method development stage, developing VR scenarios and eye-tracking and motion capturing tools and software to examine children’s dynamic risk management, as well as selecting psychometric scales and developing a questionnaire to examine children’s previous life experience regarding risk. Stage 2 is a pilot study to test and modify the data collections methods developed in stage 1 with 62 children (7-10 years old) and 50 parents. In stage 3, the main data collection stage, 500 7–10-year-old children and their parents will be recruited to explore children’s risk management skills and the association between risk management and children’s risk willingness, motor competence and their past risky play experiences.

Results:

Five schools were recruited to participate in stage 3, the main data collection stage. Recruitment of children and parents from the first school started in December 2022, and as of January 2022 178 children and their parents have consented to participate.

Conclusions:

The ViRMa project will increase our understanding of how children’s characteristics, upbringing, and previous experiences influence their learning and ability to handle challenges. Through development and use of cutting-edge technology and previously developed measures to describe aspects of the child’s past experiences, the current project addresses crucial topics related to children’s health and development. Such knowledge may guide pedagogical questions, development of educational, injury prevention, and other health-related interventions, and reveal essential areas for focus in future studies. It may also impact how risk is addressed in crucial societal institutions like the family, early childhood education and schools.