Explore Play Wales
The Play Satisfaction Survey: A guide to using it locally is designed to support local authorities to consult with children as part of their Play Sufficiency Duty requirements.
This new guide sets out good practice in planning, preparing and using the survey, and provides guidance on collecting, processing and undertaking some basic analysis of the data. Written by David Dallimore, it is aimed at local authority officers undertaking surveys of children’s play satisfaction.
The purpose of the Play Satisfaction Survey is to gain an understanding of children’s views on the sufficiency of opportunities to play in their areas. This is key in the first part of the Play Sufficiency Duty requirements, which is to understand the barriers to creating a play friendly environment. A survey can go some way to meet this objective, and the results can have an important role in part two of the duty by providing the evidence needed to identify gaps in provision and support the development of action plans to address these gaps.
We encourage every local authority to use the standard Play Satisfaction Survey to enable comparisons in experiences between areas, and across time. This would be extremely useful both nationally and locally in developing play policy.
David is a policy advisor and research consultant specialising in early years childcare and play.