It takes a neighborhood to keep kids active

by Bev Betkowski, University of Alberta

edited by Gaby Clark, reviewed by Andrew Zinin

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Getting youngsters to go outside and play doesn't just rely on family support, but also on a neighborhood coming together to create a good environment, University of Alberta research shows.

In a study involving 92 preschoolers and their families, the children tended to spend more time playing actively outdoors when their parents felt a strong sense of community involvement, says Yeongho Hwang, who led the research as part of his Ph.D. work in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation. The work is published in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health.

"Community efforts that strengthen civic engagement to improve the neighborhood and address shared concerns—such as creating safer environments—may help create more supportive conditions for preschool-aged children to play outdoors," he notes.

That active outdoor play—unstructured, fun physical activity—is important for healthy development, helping kids make social connections, improve their attention and focus, lower stress, build strong bones and get essential amounts of vitamin D, Hwang adds.

Making sure youngsters have a chance to frolic outdoors also supports their "right to play," stemming from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, he notes.

"It recognizes play as a fundamental right of every child, so active outdoor play is one way of supporting that during the preschool years."

To give researchers an accurate picture of daily movement, each child taking part in the study wore a small elastic belt with an accelerometer to capture movement intensity and a GPS monitor to record location over seven days during waking hours.

At the same time, parents completed a questionnaire about child, family and neighborhood social factors and kept diaries detailing their child's daily activities, including time, location and companions for each activity. By combining all of the data, researchers were able to identify when the children were physically active outdoors in nonorganized, nontravel activities.

The study examined children's active outdoor play in three ways. It looked at light-intensity and moderate- to vigorous-intensity active outdoor play separately, then combined the two to calculate total active outdoor play.

After accounting for seasonal variation, the research showed that individual and family factors added relatively little to explaining differences in how much the children played actively outdoors. Instead, neighborhood social factors contributed the most, explaining an additional 9% to 12% of these differences in each of the three measures.

In particular, youngsters played outside significantly more when there was community involvement in efforts to improve the community, such as by organizing meetings with police and other groups to promote neighborhood safety.

Though more research is needed to test the theory directly, it's possible that civic engagement "may help strengthen social connections and improve neighborhood safety by enabling residents to work together to address shared concerns," Hwang notes.

"If parents feel their neighborhood is safer, they may be more comfortable giving their children opportunities to play outdoors."

By looking at social factors, rather than just the demographics or physical features of neighborhoods that research typically focuses on, the study provides new insight into how to get youngsters back outside to play, says professor Dr. Valerie Carson, a co-author and supervisor on the work.

"Research has shown that active outdoor play has been declining across generations, so it's important to understand what factors might explain that in order to reverse this trend."

Publication details

Yeongho Hwang et al., The Relative Contributions of Individual, Family, and Neighborhood Social Factors to Active Outdoor Play in Preschool-Aged Children: Integrating Accelerometer, Global Positioning System, Time-Use Diary, and Questionnaire Data, Journal of Physical Activity and Health (2026). DOI: 10.1123/jpah.2025-0407

Journal information: Journal of Physical Activity and Health

Clinical categories

PediatricsChildren's healthFitness & Physical activity Provided by University of Alberta Who's behind this story?

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