Secret Space: Children's Perspective of Secret Hiding Places

Sahand Abbasi (Texas Tech University)

Introduction

Children, particularly in urban areas, live and play in the indoor and outdoor environments planned and monitored by adults. There are very few environments that they have more attachment to because of the control they don’t have over such environments. In secret spaces, children create and control environments which they can claim as their own.

The main psychological theory behind this study is the theory of “prospect and refuge” which tries to describe why certain environments feel more secure. Environments with the security feeling will often provide people with the capacity to observe (prospect) without being seen (refuge).

This study tries to address the following research questions:

• Which materials have more impact on creating higher level of perceived secrecy in secret hiding space?

• Which materials provide more opportunities for cooperative behavior?

Methods
Methods including focus groups and interview have been used for this research, exploratory questionnaires were given to parents and interviews with teachers were audio-taped, anonymized at point of recording, and transcribed as text documents. Another method is the focus group with children, with the groups of two to four children,

Participants (N=80) were recruited purposefully based on the research questions, theoretical frameworks, and evidence informing the study; from children age 3-5 from 4 child care centers in Texas. The participants were randomly assigned to groups of two to four for the focus group sessions and each session lasted for at most 15 minutes. The sessions used the Child Assessment Schedule (CAS) instrument in order to be standardized and reliable.

Conclusion
This study tries to investigate children’s understanding and experience of the concept of secret space by exploring the impact of different materials on the level of secrecy and cooperative behavior of children, and to make suggestions for creating child-friendly outdoor environments, associating children’s perspectives.