Browsing by Subject "survey research"
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Item Growing Minds: The Relationship Between Parental Attitude about Nature and the Development of Fine and Gross Motor Skills in Children(2012-07-16) McFarland, Amy Lene'Adults associate their childhood with playing outdoors, often in natural settings. This type of free play is valuable to child development. Children tend to use outdoor play areas in physically active ways, and time spent outdoors relates positively to increased physical activity in children. However, children today are spending an increasing amount of time indoors rather than outdoors. Recent research has shown that the amount of time children spend in outdoor play is directly related to parental concerns about their children's exposure to outdoor hazards. The purpose of this project was to investigate the relationship between parental attitude toward nature and the development of fine and gross motor skills in young children. The sample for this study was drawn from parents of children ages 3 to 5 years old enrolled at one of two University Child Development Centers. The assessment tool used was composed of sections that ask parents about their attitudes toward nature, about their young children spending time outdoors, how much time their children actually spend in outdoor and indoor activities, and standard demographic questions. The childcare centers independently assessed d correlations and ANOVA. Results from this study indicated that parents had positive views toward nature and towards their child's recreation. Children who participated in certain indoor activities tended to score higher in the area of fine motor skills. However, children who spent more time indoors in free play had lower gross motor skill scores. Parents who scored better on the Parental Attitude toward Their Child's Outdoor Recreation scale reported that their child spent more time in outdoor free play and outdoor organized sports and activities. Parents preferred outdoor play spaces when compared to indoor play spaces and specifically those outdoor spaces that were constructed with more nearby natural components.Item Instrumentation in Health Education and the Adolescent Health Risk Behavior Survey (AHRBS) Instrument(2010-01-14) Smith, Matthew L.This journal article format dissertation examined aspects of survey research methodology in health education. In the first study, the author examined articles published in Health Education and Behavior, Health Education Journal, Health Education Research, and International Electronic Journal of Health Education to assess if authors report survey instrument characteristics and results of psychometric property tests for data collected with survey instruments. In the second study, the author examined the validity and reliability of data collected from 1,992 Indiana middle and high school students with the Adolescent Health Risk Behavior Survey (AHRBS) instrument. The AHRBS instrument was created using the Biopsychosocial Model (BPSM) theoretical framework and investigates the relationships and influences of adolescents? intrapersonal and normative perceptions on alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use. In the third study, the author used reliable measures for the data to conduct mediation analyses to examine the effects of adolescent perceptions of their social environment, such as perceived peer disapproval, perceived parental disapproval, and perceived peer behavior, on adolescent lifetime inhalant use in the presence of the theorized mediator variable, characteristics of the peer group. The author concluded the following: (1) published articles in the four health education journals inconsistently reported survey instrument characteristics or results of psychometric property testing for the data collected with survey instruments; (2) systematically eliminating items due to their limited contribution to scale reliability for these data using exploratory factor analyses, confirmatory factor analyses, and calculating internal consistency reliability shortened the AHRBS instrument by 41.18% and improved the reliability of measures for these data; and (3) the effects of perceived peer disapproval, perceived parental disapproval, and perceived peer behavior on adolescent lifetime inhalant use were significantly mediated by characteristics of the peer group as theorized by the BPSM. Findings of this dissertation have implications for the field of health education. First, survey instrument characteristics and internal reliability coefficients for data collected with instrument scales should be reported in published manuscripts. Second, researchers should examine the validity and reliability of data collected with survey instruments. Third, only reliable measures for the data should be used in statistical analyses.