Abstract
The Children’s Developmental Play Instrument is a multidimensional tool intended for use in observing the play activity of mainstream children. The instrument consists of scales to segment a child’s activity and to analyze the child’s play activity into Affective, Cognitive, Narrative and Developmental Components. Subsequently, the Functional Analysis is used to rate the Engagement of the child, the Use of Symbols by the child and the child’s Play Style. Two reliability studies reveal predominantly good to excellent levels of consensus between raters. These positive findings suggest the need for additional research to gather further data with groups of children from varying chronological ages and social groups. These play activity ratings, used in conjunction with other ratings of the child’s mileau, can serve as indicators of the general well-being of the child.
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Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Brittany Eldridge, Scott Hirose, Brianna Jordan , Kimberly Manual, Alexis Maron, Chloe Lara-Russack, Christine Mayor, and Laura Wood who gave time and energy to rating recordings of the children at play. The Pacella Parent Child Center of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, Leon Hoffman, Director, and the Little Missionary Preschool, Eileen Johnson, Director, gave us entry to recording children at play. And special appreciation to the International Psychoanalytic Association, for providing partial financial support enabling us to record, study and write about children at play.
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Chazan, S.E. Observing Play Activity: The Children’s Developmental Play Instrument (CDPI) with Reliability Studies. Child Ind Res 2, 417–436 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-009-9043-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-009-9043-9