The purpose of this study is to develop assessment tools to diagnose the child friendly level in the community. Community environments in which children and adolescents are growing can be monitored diversely and comprehensive and can be found the chan...
The purpose of this study is to develop assessment tools to diagnose the child friendly level in the community. Community environments in which children and adolescents are growing can be monitored diversely and comprehensive and can be found the change of trend continually through assessment tools.
To develop assessment tools, related literature was reviewed. To reflect Korea specific social and cultural characteristics, 198 children and adolescents between 11 and 18 and 104 parents living in Seoul, Daejeon and Hwaseong (n=302) were interviewed in depth. Analyzing such quantitative and qualitative materials, 90 preliminary questionnaires in 6 areas were developed.
Questionnaires were classified as objective tools and subjective tools through the content validity test by 18 experts and the verification by preliminary survey with 85 children, adolescents, parents.
From the analysis, preliminary questionnaires were classified objective and subjective tools. And then survey subjects of subjective tools were classified as those for parents, children and adolescents.
Objective tools are that professionals check the fact based on laws and institutions. 20 objective questionnaires were induced. While subjective tools are to check subjective perception of children, adolescents and parents on their community environments. 38 subjective questionnaires for parents and 35 subjective questionnaires for children and adolescents were induced. Subjective tools were collected for the evidence materials for construct validity and was calculated to verify the validity. For this, 432 children and adolescents between 11 and 18 and 201 parents living in Seoul, Daejeon and Hwaseong (n=633) were surveyed. Additionally, to identify the perception of children and adolescents on childfriendliness level in the community, 451 children and adolescents in the same region were surveyed. The major results of this study can be summarized as follows.
First, 20 questions in 6 areas were induced as objective tools; 2 questions in health and social services, 8 questions in safety and protection environments, 1 question in educational environments, 3 questions in play and leisure environments, 2 questions in social participation and 3 questions in policy foundation.
Second, as subjective tools, 33 questions in 6 areas were induced for parents; 5 questions in health and social services, 8 questions in safety and protection environments, 6 questions in educational environments, 7 questions in play and leisure environments, 4 questions in social participation and 3 questions in policy foundation. For children and adolescents, 30 questions in 5 areas were induced; 3 questions in health and social services, 8 questions in safety and protection environments, 6 questions in educational environments, 7 questions in play and leisure environments, 6 questions in social environments in which social participation and policy foundation are combined. Reliability coefficient of evaluation tools for parents and for children and adolescents was very high as higher than .90, and all subareas showed satisfactory reliability level such as higher than .80.
Third, children and adolescents evaluated their community environments negatively in general. While they evaluated educational environments as relatively fair out of 5 subareas, they thought social conditions for participation, environments for the protection and safe growth, and various resources of communities to grow healthily insufficient. They perceived the environments in which they could enjoy play and do leisure activities most insufficient out of 5 subareas. Through these results, it was found that it was necessary to comprehensively consider various social and physical environments of cities to improve the quality of children and adolescents. That is to say, we can conclude that the policy should be developed considering various social and physical environments in a multilateral way focusing on services such as housing and transportation environments, cultural facilities, play space, social participation activities far beyond focusing only on education.
Child Friendly Assessment tools is provides the orientation of policies that the community should pursue to improve the quality of life of children and adolescents. Through the survey re sult analysis applying assessment tools, they can be used as basic materials to set up priority and practice plan of policies, and to construct foundation to build a child friendly city.