Session: Evaluating Preventive Interventions in Play Settings: Measurement, Frameworks and Findings (Society for Prevention Research 24th Annual Meeting)

The goal of this symposium session is to explore the impact of an innovative positive youth development program that operates in out-of-school time (OST) settings. Playworks (www.playworks.org) is a non-profit organization that places a full-time, trained Coach in low-income elementary schools to provide multi-faceted, play-based programming focused around recess and outdoor play. Playworks serves approximately 170,000 students at 380 low-income schools in 23 cities. The symposium opens with the Playworks Director of Evaluation speaking about the unique challenges of conducting evaluation research in play settings, followed by research presentations from three different institutions sharing their work on measuring the implementation and effectiveness of Playworks.

The first paper, “Creating and Testing a Framework to Assess Recess Quality,” presents the results of a 2010 study that examines 6 low-income elementary schools’ to determine the ways in which Playworks improves recess functioning. These findings were  used to develop the ‘Great Recess Framework’ to assess the quality of recess in schools.  A 2015 study is now testing the feasibility of the ‘Great Recess Framework’ in 24 schools within 6 cities.

The second  paper, “Impact Findings from a Randomized Experiment of Playworks,” discusses the results of the first school-randomized trial of the Playworks program, examining the impact of Playworks within six domains: school climate, conflict resolution and aggression, learning and academic performance, youth development, student behavior, and physical activity. Analysis revealed strong effects in some domains (e.g., physical activity), no effects in other domains (e.g., social emotional development), and no adverse effects in any domain.

The third paper, “Growth in Social Emotional Competence Among Student Recess Leaders,” presents the results of a pre-test/post-test pilot study study examining the growth of Social Emotional Competence among 4th and 5th grade students participating in one high-dosage component of the Playworks program, the Junior Coach Leadership Program (JCLP). JCLP provides leadership training to group of students who meet after school to learn recess games, principles of fair and inclusive play, and positive conflict resolution and then act as recess leaders to their peers and younger classmates during recess.

At the conclusion of the presentations, a national expert will provide comments and moderate a discussion about the contributions of these studies to our knowledge about the preventive potential of interventions in play settings, such as recess, and build consensus around a future research agenda that addresses challenges and is responsive to needs for assessing the evidence-base of OST interventions in low-income communities.