THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL PLAYGROUND QUALITY ON PLAYING ACTIVITY AND SOCIAL INTERACTION OF PRIMARY STUDENTS

• Main Author: Nuriyatun Nisa Cholis, Fitri
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Arsitektur
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/52045
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The increasing population in Indonesia implies the growing population of children that rises from year to year. The ever-increasing number is in line with the rising number of primary schools which dominated other school levels. However, the increasing number is not accompanied by the school's quality, including the school playground. Moreover, the current phenomenon that can be seen obviously is children have been already familiar with technology, especially in using gadgets. The early use of gadgets will inhibit children's cognitive, affective, and motor development, especially for their social development. Ther lack of social interaction skills in children can lead to bad things like bullying. Bullying can destroy children's physical and mental condition due to not being able to apply social values properly. As an effort to alleviate this, children need to be diverted from gadgets by playing non-digital games. At the same time, it will increase their social ability to support them as they grow up. Therefore, it is necessary to reveal knowledge which schools' playground qualities can improve their social interaction skills. The research aims to identify and seek the correlational relationship between school playground, playing activities, and children responses towards social interaction based on the quality and quantity of social interaction. The interpretation of the correlational relationship between variables is used to formulate the planning and design criteria of a children playground in a primary school. The research was conducted in two stages, namely, qualitative that focused on exploratory and qualitative-quantitative that focused on explanatory. In the first stage, the data were collected by questionnaire form. Meanwhile, in the second stage, the researcher collected data by spreading out the questionnaire form, observation, and interview with the primary school students and teachers. The analytical method used was content analysis. From the factor analysis result, the researcher identified the new variables that represent the measured variables of playground quality, personality, and social interaction quality (latent variables). There were nine latent variables in the playground quality, i.e., “comfort”, “infrastructure”, “nature”, “accessibility”, “thermal comfort”, “hilarity”, “habitability”, and “friend presence”. Then, the latent variables of personality were “self-development”, “self-regularity”, “social”, and “emotion”. Then, there were four latent variables from the social interaction quality, namely “attention to friends”, “closeness with friends”, “conflict with friends”, and “fun with friends”. Meanwhile, the playing activity's latent variable could be identified through the “intensity” and “duration” of playing. The multivariate correlation analysis results found a relationship between the latent variables of the quality of the playground, personality, playing activities, and the quality of social interactions. The quality of the playground tends to directly influence playing activities, which then affects the quality of social interactions so that the connection between the quality of the playground and the quality of social interactions becomes an indirect relationship. Furthermore, personality variables have a direct influence on playing activities and the quality of social interactions. Children with individual personalities such as having good “social” and “self-development” tend to experience increased social interactions due to the increasing playing intensity. According to respondents, the “comfort” and the “presence of friends” are also essential factors in the quality of the playground. The analysis revealed that there were also ten criteria for designing school playgrounds based on the factual playground criteria. These criteria are “nature”, “thermal comfort”, “hilarity”, “availability”, “safety”, “cleanliness”, “spaciousness”, “openness”, “infrastructure” and “accessibility”. The findings regarding these criteria can be used as a reference and consideration in designing a playground that meets children's standards and desires as users.