Parental Concerns in Facilitating Children's Physical Activity Participation in Hong Kong

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in English; abstract also in Chinese. This study examines the parental concerns in facilitating their children's physical activity participation in Hong Kong. By adopting a qualitative approach, 22 parents (10 fathers and 12 mothers), randomly chosen from in a larger study examining 802 (aged 9 to 16) children’s physical activity engagement, were invited for a semi-structured interview. It is believed that these parents could represent the typicality of Hong Kong parents in increasing our understanding of the study's focus. Interview data were analyzed by using an open coding system to identify meaningful pieces of information within the comprehensive text segment (Tesch, 1990). Three themes emerged from the interview data and results in relation to Confucianism showed that parental long working hours, safety issues and over emphasize in children's academic pursuits were found to be their major concerns in facilitating children's further engagement in physical activities. Specifically, fathers and mothers were found to differ in their safety concerns for their children's physical activity involvement. Future interventions aiming at solving the suggested parental concerns could increase children's physical activity participation. 採用質化研究之方法本研究旨在探討二十二名香港家長於促進學童參與體育活動的考慮因素。研究發現考慮因素包括家長的工作時間、家長對學童參與體育活動的安全性及家長過份重視學業成績。研究結果建議為要進一步促進學童參與體育活動必須透過有效解決家長對學童於參予體育活動的考慮因素。(一)加強家長對帶有危險性的運動的知識 (二)政府及學校團體應增加對家庭運動的支持 (三)透過工作坊讓家長了解學業與運動並存對學童身心發展的重要性。