A Cross-Cultural Examination of Children's Weekend Activities
Asil Ali Özdoğru, Joan Newman, Çağrı Özköse-Bıyık, Temi Bidjerano, Chin-Cheng Kao
936 fourth graders from Bulgaria, Taiwan, Turkey, and United States reported on their usual activities in Saturdays. Play, watching television, and routines were the most reported activities across four countries. There were apparent cultural differences in time spent in academics and sports, and gender differences in reading and play.
Children's participation and engagement in various out-of-school time activities and programs are defined by their social, economic, and cultural contexts (Göncü, 1999). Activities of children in developing countries can be much different than the ones in developed countries (Ritchie, Lloyd, & Grant, 2004). Differences as well as similarities in various out-of-school activities across cultures were noted in the literature. However, there are limited data on activity patterns of children from Bulgaria, Taiwan, and Turkey. Weekend is the two-day leisure period in which children can engage in variety of activities unrestricted by the schooling schedule. Previous research has shown some differences in time usage during weekends and weekdays. Following Larson and Verma's (1999) recommendations for more descriptive studies of children's activity patterns in different cultures, this study investigates children's weekend activities in four countries.
Participants of this study were fourth grade elementary school students primarily from middle socioeconomic classes in four countries; Bulgaria (n = 289), Taiwan (n = 249), Turkey (n = 137) and USA (n = 195). An after-school activity questionnaire developed by the researchers, asked children to recall the activity they generally engaged in during each given one-hour time period on Saturdays from 10:00 to 22:00. Sample activities (music lesson, soccer, TV, eating, homework, reading, and playing with friends) were provided to facilitate children's response generation.
Across all countries and both genders the average amount of time spent in each activity showed that children spend most of their time in play (32 %) then routines (29.5 %), TV (19 %), academics (8.5 %), extracurricular (7 %), reading (2.5 %) and sports (1.5 %) respectively during weekends. A 4 by 2 Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was performed by using 7 activity categories as dependent variables. Country with 4 levels and gender with 2 levels were the independent variables. MANOVA revealed a significant effect for each independent variable and their interaction. An individual Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for each activity category tested the effects of country, gender, and their interaction on activity participation. All three factors were statistically significant (
p<.05) for reading and play. Country and interaction effects were significant for extracurricular; country factor for TV, academics, and sports; and interaction effect for routines.
Turkish children spent significantly more time in reading than their American and Bulgarian counterparts who spent more time in reading than Taiwanese children. Female students in each country spent more time in reading than their male counterparts except in the Bulgarian sample. American and Bulgarian children spent significantly more time in play than Turkish children who spent more time in play than their Taiwanese peers. Males spent more time in play than females in all countries except in the Bulgarian sample. In extracurricular activities, Taiwanese and Turkish children spent significantly more time than their American and Bulgarian counterparts. Taiwanese children spent significantly more time watching TV than their American and Bulgarian counterparts who spent more time watching TV than Turkish children. Taiwanese and Turkish children spent significantly more time in academics than Bulgarian children who spent more time in academics than American children. American children significantly surpassed other countries in time spent in sports.
Keywords: Out-of-school activities, cross-cultural psychology, gender differences
Citation: Özdoğru, A. A., Newman, J., Bidjerano, T., Özköse-Bıyık, Ç., & Kao, C.-C. (2007, May).
A cross-cultural examination of children’s weekend activities. Poster presented at the 19th annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington, DC, USA.
In the evaluation of an academic program, students and faculty, as major groups of stakeholders, can perform various phases of evaluation. This study demonstrates a case example of a graduate program utilizing its constituents in the planning and implementation steps of its evaluation. The program accomplished a valid and responsive evaluation as a result of the collaborative project between students and faculty. Triangulation of different perspectives and experiences provided a rich array of information in the identification of major program components, development of essential outcome measures, and interpretation of evaluation results. This collaborative approach also resulted in the strengthening of sense of community among program members by enhancing community knowledge and ownership. Findings and experiences from this participatory evaluation process will be shared to exemplify the lessons learned and best practices for academic program evaluation from an empowerment perspective.
