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. 2022 Sep 9;17(9):e0274238. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0274238

Parents’ awareness, knowledge, and experiences of play and its benefits in child development: A systematic review protocol

Brightlin Nithis Dhas 1,*, Shoba Mary Chacko 1, Vince Soloman David Solomon 1, Vimal Sriram 2
Editor: Emily Freeman3
PMCID: PMC9462721  PMID: 36084103

Abstract

Background

Play is an important childhood occupation and a medium for development. Parents’ attitudes towards play, knowledge about play and its benefits, and their experiences in facilitating effective play are key factors that determine the experiences of play in children. These factors related to parent’s understanding and experiences of play gain additional significance when the child has a disability. The aim of this systematic review is to synthesize the available evidence on awareness, knowledge, and experience of play among parents and to summarise the findings.

Method

MEDLINE, CINAHL, APA PsycINFO, Psychology Database, Sociological Abstracts, EMBASE, and Cochrane Collection Plus will be searched for studies of any design that investigate awareness, knowledge, and experience of play among parents and its benefits to child development. Manual searches from reference lists of relevant papers will also be completed. The primary outcomes are parents’ knowledge (what constitutes play), experiences (what parents feel about play) and awareness (benefits of play) about play. Three independent reviewers will screen identified papers with pre-defined eligibility criteria and extract data using a customized extraction form. Discrepancies will be resolved in discussion with a fourth reviewer. A synthesis of eligible studies and summary will be provided.

Discussion

A systematic review of quantitative and qualitative research evidence of parents’ awareness, knowledge, and experiences in play will be carried out. This will highlight parents’ own views on play among their children, current theories/domains related to parents’ awareness, knowledge, and experience in play, and outcome measures that have been used. In addition, comparison among views of parents of children with disabilities and parents of typically developing children will be made. The results will be presented as a summary of key findings under the themes of awareness, knowledge, and experience of parents in play.

Introduction

Play has tremendous growth promoting potential in a range of developmental domains including cognition, language, social integration, social communication, and emotional regulation [1, 2]. Children have an innate desire to play and through play they develop many life skills without even realizing it [3]. Everyone acknowledges that play is an important aspect of child development. However, there are considerable differences among parent and professional conceptualisations of play and its value to child development [4]. In their study, Fisher et al. [4] found that mothers consider both structured activities (goal-oriented activities consisting of a sequence of events/actions) and unstructured activities (highly varied activities involving imagination/creativity) as highly playful, whereas, professionals’ rate structured activities to be less playful. With regards to its developmental value, mothers felt unstructured activities contribute less to child development compared to professionals, while both parents and professionals ascribed high developmental value to structured activities.

There are many factors that influence play, among them, family is an important factor [5, 6]. Parental beliefs about play are found to affect the play experiences of their children [7]. Parents are considered to have a "gatekeeper" role in determining which activities children do and therefore their awareness towards the importance of play in child development can have an impact on children’s play opportunities. Parents who value the importance of play devote more time for play [3] and encourage the type of play they deem to be important [8]. For example, parents who place importance on physical activities tend to provide more opportunities for physical play while those who place importance on intellectual activities tend to provide more opportunities for intellectual play [3].

Knowledge regarding play among parents is another factor in determining play experiences of their children. For example, what toys to buy based on the developmental level of the child is important as this could determine if the child derives enjoyment from playing with them or the child feels frustrated because they cannot play with it [3]. Children whose parents had better knowledge about play were likely to engage in higher level of play [9]. Certain disabling conditions impose specific limitations on playing skills for children with these conditions [10]. For example, play participation in children with Cerebral Palsy was linked to their motor skills [11] while for children with Autism, certain play skills are impaired [12]. Knowledge about overcoming these obstacles through changes or adaptations to toys and or environment would make a difference in play participation for their children [13]. Even if parents were aware and knowledgeable about play and its benefits, it does not translate into them being competent enough to play with their children effectively [14]. Therefore, it is suggested that parents need some training on how to play with their children in order to make their play interactions rewarding and already some positive results has been observed on interventions targeting teaching play skills to parents [15].

Studies on parental experiences while playing with their children that explore questions related to “how, what, when, where and why” parents play with their child provide valuable insight on the level and type of parental engagement in their children’s play [16]. The amount of time parents play with their children, the type of engagement during play and the toys/play materials they buy and use with their children depends on their viewpoints about play [17].

Play does not exist equally for all children but determined by biological factors such as gender and developmental transitions, socio-cultural factors, and specific context such as presence of an illness or disability [18]. Therefore, there could be variations in the awareness, knowledge, and experiences among parents of children with different developmental levels, culture, and children with physical, social and intellectual disabilities. For this review, we will examine studies reporting parent’s awareness, knowledge, and experience with play among children and describe the variations in terms of age groups and disability status of the children, gender of parents, and the cultural context (where reported).

Rationale for the review

Parents are an integral part of their children’s play and the play experiences are closely associated with the choices that parents make [19, 20]. Therefore, parents’ understanding of the importance or nature of play is essential in creating nurturing play experiences for children. Particularly for children with disabilities whose engagement in play occupations could be limited due to impairments in play skills, environmental barriers, or both. Parent knowledge on developmental aspects of play and adapting play could thus make a difference. Currently, there are several studies exploring the positive benefits of play in child development and interventions to improve play performance on children [21, 22]. However, little is known about how parents feel about play and if they perceive that they have enough knowledge and competence in structuring play experiences for their children. This review aims to appraise the literature on play from parents’ perspective in order to synthesize the available evidence in this important field of enquiry.

Review aims and questions

This review will aim to:

  1. Synthesize qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research related to awareness, knowledge, and experience in play among parents of typically developing children.

  2. Synthesize qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research related to awareness, knowledge, and experience in play among parents of children with disabilities.

  3. Compare 1 and 2 to identify similarities and differences in conceptualization of play by parents of typically developing children and those having children with disabilities.

The following information will also be collected and reported: Details of the participants in the reviewed studies; surveys/observational methods/standardized tools used in understanding parents’ awareness, knowledge and experience in play and interventions targeting knowledge and competence of parents in play.

Methods/Design

This protocol has been prepared following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) guidelines for systematic review protocols [23]. (The PRISMA-P checklist is included as S1 File). The review protocol has been registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews PROSPERO (CRD42021259601).

Inclusion/Exclusion criteria

Types of participants

Studies that include parents, of typically developing children or children who have any type of disabilities will be included. There will be no restrictions regarding sex, medical condition of the child or ethnic background. Studies that report on parents whose children have reached adolescence (above 11 years of age) will be excluded.

Types of studies

Studies that focus on exploring or improving parents’ understanding of play will be included. Both quantitative and qualitative study designs are required to answer the review questions. Hence no restrictions will be placed on study design. The full-text article of the study needs to be available (i.e. abstracts will be excluded). We will not be including other reviews; however, we will check references within identified existing reviews on parents’ awareness, knowledge, and experiences of children’s play to ensure that all relevant studies have been located. Non peer-reviewed publications including letters to the editor, abstract and conference proceedings, magazine articles, and book reviews will not be included. Study protocols and theses/dissertations will also be excluded.

Types of play

Since there is no universal definition of play, we will use a broad definition and all research articles that consider play in general (not specific play types such as digital play, pretend play, etc.), done with the purpose of enjoyment and not for competition (sports), achievement (physical activity or fitness), or therapeutic purpose (play therapy) will be included. The focus of many studies is on improving play skills among children or using play as a therapeutic media. However, this review’s focus is on parent perceptions of play and interventions directed towards parents to address their concerns. We will report on the common definitions and interpretations of their children’s play from the perspectives of parents.

Comparator(s)

Perspectives of parents of typically developing children will be compared to the experiences of parents of children with disabilities.

Outcome measures

The primary outcomes will be the level of parents’ awareness, knowledge, and experiences of play. Awareness refers to the level of importance parents’ attach to play in the development of the child. Knowledge covers understandings of the concept of play, its types, and the developmental stages of play. Experience relates to how, what, when, where and why parents play with their children and how they organize their schedules, objects, and environments to facilitate play.

Secondary outcomes will be to identify any survey/measures or instruments developed for assessing parents’ awareness, knowledge, and experience in relation to their children’s play. We will also identify and report on any changes in trends of how parents’ awareness, knowledge and experience of children’s play has changed over time.

Search strategy

Searches will be carried out on:

  • 1. Databases

In order to carry out a comprehensive review, we will search for relevant studies in more than one database. The databases of CINAHL (EBSCO) from 1937 to present, MEDLINE (EBSCO) from 1946 to present; APA PsycINFO (ProQuest) from 1806 to present; Psychology Database (ProQuest) from inception to present; Sociological Abstracts (ProQuest) EMBASE from 1974 to present; and Cochrane Collection Plus (EBSCO).

  • 2. Manual searches

Manual searches of reference lists and included articles in any previous reviews or metanalyses will also be conducted to identify relevant research studies.

Searches will not be limited by quantitative or qualitative filters or date limits. However, the search will be limited to articles in English language due to funding constraints.

The search strategy for the search in Medline (EBSCO) is provided (S2 File).

Screening

The web based Covidence software platform (https://www.covidence.org/) will be used for the review. Search results from the databases will be downloaded into Covidence software. Covidence will be used to identify and remove duplicates. Authors BND, VSDS and SMC will screen all titles and abstracts independently based on the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Any disagreement will be resolved by discussion and in consensus with VS. Full text review will then be conducted for all studies marked for inclusion. An audit trail will be maintained for exclusion of any studies at this stage by adding notes in Covidence.

Data extraction

A bespoke form (S3 File) developed by the authors will be used for data extraction. The sub-headings in the form were taken from relevant sections from the STROBE checklist (The Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology) [24] and the COREQ checklist (Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research) [25]. This form will be piloted on a sample of studies initially and modified if needed. BND, SMC and VSDS will extract the data.

Risk of bias (quality) assessment

The Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool [Version 18] [26] for assessing bias in both quantitative and qualitative studies will be used. The COSMIN Study Design checklist for Patient-reported outcome measurement instruments [version July 2019] [27] will be used for assessing any surveys developed to assess parents’ understanding of play. The selected studies will be critically evaluated by BND, VSDS and SMC and any discrepancies resolved in discussion with VS.

Data synthesis

A descriptive summary of included studies will be created with a meta-analysis if the included studies are sufficiently homogenous [28]. If the studies are not homogenous a narrative synthesis will be used. An applied thematic analysis approach [29] will be used to synthesize findings from qualitative studies. Where data is available, a subgroup analysis based on parents of typically developing children and parents of children with disabilities will be conducted.

Potential limitations

Certain limitations are anticipated. Since there are numerous terminologies used to describe play and parents’ understanding of it some relevant studies could potentially be missed and heterogeneity in the included studies could be expected. Restricting the searches to limited databases and limiting to only English language peer-reviewed articles is another limitation as some important articles could be missed. However, we are confident that our comprehensive search strategy, searches in multiple databases, manual search among reference lists and using a broad definition of play will provide a comprehensive review in this important topic area.

Discussion

The aim of this review is to understand the level of awareness, knowledge, and experience of play among parents. The results are expected to summarize parents’ perceptions of various dimensions of play including importance of play, attitudes towards play, and experience in supporting play. Existing theoretical perspectives of play could be compared with the parent perspectives derived from the review. This systematic review would also help to identify any lack of awareness or negative attitudes towards play from the part of parents that needs to be addressed as parental views about play affects actual play among children which in turn has the potential to affect child development [7, 19, 20]. Gaps in the literature, if any in the understanding of parental concerns and competence in playing with their children, particularly children with disabilities could be identified from the review. Moreover, comparisons of viewpoints of parents who have children with disabilities and those of typically developing children could provide insights regarding the complexities, hardships if any, and unique experiences parents of children with disabilities face while playing with their children. In addition, the review will also identify methods used in the literature to identify parental perceptions about play and any standardized questionnaires developed in this regard. This would be useful to identify existing outcome measures in this area. The inclusion of quantitative and qualitative study designs will be helpful to thoroughly explore the available literature related to the aim of this review. It is anticipated that the findings will be useful to develop insights regarding empowering parents to nurture growth of their children through play. Furthermore, areas that require further investigation and research could be identified.

Supporting information

S1 File. PRISMA-P checklist.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file. (20.9KB, docx)
S2 File. Search strategy.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file. (15.7KB, docx)
S3 File. Data extraction forms.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file. (19.6KB, docx)

Abbreviations

CINAHL

Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature

COSMIN

Consensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments

PRISMA–P

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Protocols

PROSPERO

International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews

Data Availability

All relevant data from this study will be made available upon study completion.

Funding Statement

Hamad Medical Corporation provided support in the form of salaries for authors BND, SMC and VSDS. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the 'author contributions' section. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Decision Letter 0

Hugh Cowley

15 Jun 2022

PONE-D-21-25685Parents’ awareness, knowledge, and experiences of play and its benefits in child development: a systematic review protocolPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Dhas,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #2: Partly

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Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The manuscript presents a registered report protocol for a systematic review on parents’ awareness, knowledge, competence and experiences of play. In addition, the authors aim to compare these between parents of children with disabilities and parents of typically developing children. The proposed study is original and should be of interest for the field. Although it is widely accepted that play has a major role in human development, the influence of parental variables has often been neglected in this research field.

I have a few general comments for the authors that I feel should be addressed before the manuscript is further considered for peer review:

Introduction

In general, although very briefly described, the theoretical background presented does point well towards the main research question. However, I think that some more general descriptions of the main concepts would be helpful to lay the foundation for the Methods section. For example, it remains unclear what the authors refer to as “play” and which developmental stage the authors refer to. It is quite obvious that the quality and quantity of children’s play (and thus also parents attitudes towards and their roles in it) will change dramatically throughout development. This is has to be described and the authors have to find a way to account for these developmental transitions in their study, either by focusing on a specific developmental stage or by taking “age” into account as a study variable. Furthermore, the introduction mentions parent’s awareness, knowledge, and competence as the main outcome variables. However, in the methods section (and abstract) it seems that four variables are included: awareness, knowledge, competence and experience. The title, on the other hand, only mentions “awareness, knowledge, and experiences”. This should be resolved and the introduction should mention and explain the main study variables in more detail. The introduction also lacks a particular motivation for the comparison between parents of children with disabilities (again: what do the authors mean here?) and parents of typically developing children.

Methodology

The description of participants states that parents with “children” above 18 years of age will be excluded. Despite the fact that a 17-year-old is barely referred to as a “child” (but rather as an adolescent), the theoretical background presented seems to be focused on children’s play, and not of adolescents. Thus, the authors have to explain why studies with adolescents should be included in the literature review and, if so, have to adapt the theoretical background in order to capture the developmental transition of play from infancy to adulthood.

Some more minor comments:

1. The types of studies included does not exclude previous reviews or meta-analyses – how do the authors go about these studies?

2. What is the reason to search in five different databases and to have three different independent reviewers?

3. The authors state as a limitation that “...since there are numerous terminologies used to describe play and parents’ understanding of it some relevant studies could potentially be missed”. This is why it is important that the authors state their conceptualization of “play” in the introduction and explain in the Methods section how they apply this definition in the literature search.

I hope that the above suggestions help the authors to improve the manuscript.

Reviewer #2: The authors have presented their plan for a systematic review of parents' knowledge, competence, awareness, and experience of play with their children. This is an important and interesting topic that will benefit from their review.

I have some concerns regarding the current plan that I think need to be reconsidered.

- The age range of the children is too broad. Play between parents and infants/toddlers/pre-schoolers/children/teenagers are all wildly different. Including all ages will confound the results and make interpretations difficult. I would recommend reducing the age range.

- The primary outcomes are on important topics, but it is unclear how they will be operationalised, especially given that the secondary outcome is to identify if there are any measures that exist to measure these constructs.

- The planned year range to be searched is too broad. Parenting has changed dramatically even in the last 10 years. Including any study ever published, as appears to be the plan as outlined in the search strategy, will confound the results.

- The authors talk about parents throughout the proposal. Parenting, and especially play, has been shown to be very different for mothers and fathers. This needs to be taken into consideration when collecting and presenting the data and research findings.

- There are some minor grammatical errors that need revising.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PLoS One. 2022 Sep 9;17(9):e0274238. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0274238.r002

Author response to Decision Letter 0

29 Jun 2022

Response to Reviewers

Editor comments:

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

When revising your manuscript please ensure your address fully the reviewers' comments regarding the selection criteria, in particular those regarding the difference in play between infants and adolescents, and the timescale of the articles to be included given changes in parenting behavior over time.

Response:

We thank the editor for giving us an opportunity to revise and resubmit the manuscript. We have carefully read all the comments from the reviewers and addressed them appropriately. As per the suggestions, we have excluded the perceptions of play among parents of adolescents and to organize the findings from mothers of children in early and middle childhood separately. Likewise, we agree that parenting change over time. If any such trend will be observed in parents’ awareness, knowledge, and experiences of play, it will be reported in our results.

Journal Requirements:

Comment 1:

Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

Response:

We have adhered to PLOS ONE’s styles to the best of our understanding

Comment 2:

Thank you for stating the following in your Competing Interests section: "NO authors have competing interests"

Please complete your Competing Interests on the online submission form to state any Competing Interests. If you have no competing interests, please state "The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.", as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now

This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

Response:

We have added the statement in the cover letter as advised.

Comment 3:

In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability.

Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter.

Response:

This is a systematic review protocol. Hence there is no data generated yet. However, we have attached the search criteria and data extraction forms as a supporting information file (S2 Additional File - Search Strategy. S3 Additional File - Data Extraction Forms)

Comment 4:

Please note that in order to use the direct billing option the corresponding author must be affiliated with the chosen institute. Please either amend your manuscript to change the affiliation or corresponding author, or email us at plosone@plos.org with a request to remove this option.

Response:

The corresponding author, Brightlin Nithis Dhas is still affiliated with Hamad Medical Corporation. The corresponding email has been changed to the institutional email (bdhas@hamad.qa) in the manuscript.

Comment 5:

Thank you for stating the following in the Financial Disclosure section: "The authors received no specific funding for this work."

We note that one or more of the authors are employed by a commercial company: Hamad Medical Corporation

a. Please provide an amended Funding Statement declaring this commercial affiliation, as well as a statement regarding the Role of Funders in your study. If the funding organization did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript and only provided financial support in the form of authors' salaries and/or research materials, please review your statements relating to the author contributions, and ensure you have specifically and accurately indicated the role(s) that these authors had in your study. You can update author roles in the Author Contributions section of the online submission form.

Please also include the following statement within your amended Funding Statement.

“The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors [insert relevant initials], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.”

If your commercial affiliation did play a role in your study, please state and explain this role within your updated Funding Statement.

b. Please also provide an updated Competing Interests Statement declaring this commercial affiliation along with any other relevant declarations relating to employment, consultancy, patents, products in development, or marketed products, etc.

Within your Competing Interests Statement, please confirm that this commercial affiliation does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests) . If this adherence statement is not accurate and there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared.

Please include both an updated Funding Statement and Competing Interests Statement in your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf.

Response:

We have added the statement in the cover letter as advised and in the declaration of interests section of the manuscript.

Comment 6:

Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information.

Response:

We have added the captions of the supporting information files at the end of the manuscript (lines 262 to 265).

Comment 7.

We note that this manuscript is a systematic review or meta-analysis; our author guidelines therefore require that you use PRISMA guidance to help improve reporting quality of this type of study. Please upload copies of the completed PRISMA checklist as Supporting Information with a file name “PRISMA checklist”.

Response:

This is a systematic review protocol. The PRISMA-P checklist is added as an additional file.

Reviewer Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Response:

We thank the reviewers for the positive comments

2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

Response:

We have addressed each of the comments and suggestions proposed by the reviewers. Our responses to each of the comments and the reference to the corrections made by us are described under each specific comment.

3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Response:

We thank the reviewers for the positive comments

4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Response:

This is a systematic review protocol. The PRISMA-P checklist is added as S1 additional file. Once the study is complete, the PRISMA checklist will be published with the report. Data extraction forms and risk of bias assessment forms will be made available as supplementary materials. This is mentioned in lines 276 to 279 in the manuscript

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Response:

We thank the reviewers for the positive comments

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer 1

Comment 1:

The manuscript presents a registered report protocol for a systematic review on parents’ awareness, knowledge, competence and experiences of play. In addition, the authors aim to compare these between parents of children with disabilities and parents of typically developing children. The proposed study is original and should be of interest for the field. Although it is widely accepted that play has a major role in human development, the influence of parental variables has often been neglected in this research field.

Response:

We thank the reviewer for their positive comment on our work.

Comment 2.

I have a few general comments for the authors that I feel should be addressed before the manuscript is further considered for peer review:

Introduction

In general, although very briefly described, the theoretical background presented does point well towards the main research question. However, I think that some more general descriptions of the main concepts would be helpful to lay the foundation for the Methods section. For example, it remains unclear what the authors refer to as “play” and which developmental stage the authors refer to. It is quite obvious that the quality and quantity of children’s play (and thus also parents attitudes towards and their roles in it) will change dramatically throughout development. This is has to be described and the authors have to find a way to account for these developmental transitions in their study, either by focusing on a specific developmental stage or by taking “age” into account as a study variable. Furthermore, the introduction mentions parent’s awareness, knowledge, and competence as the main outcome variables. However, in the methods section (and abstract) it seems that four variables are included: awareness, knowledge, competence and experience. The title, on the other hand, only mentions “awareness, knowledge, and experiences”. This should be resolved and the introduction should mention and explain the main study variables in more detail. The introduction also lacks a particular motivation for the comparison between parents of children with disabilities (again: what do the authors mean here?) and parents of typically developing children.

Response:

We thank the reviewer for the suggestion to add general descriptions to the main concepts in the introduction. The discrepancies in parent and professional understanding of play is added to the introduction (lines 52 to 60). More information on what type of play is considered in the review is provided in the Methods section (lines 153 to 156). As suggested, more descriptions of the outcome variables, awareness, knowledge, and experiences are added in introduction (lines 63 to 65, and 85 to 87) and in Methods section (lines 168 to 172). We welcome the suggestion to take age into account as a study variable. We have included this and in addition to age, we have planned to explore variations in gender of parents, culture, and disability status of the child and report it appropriately (lines 90 to 97). We would like to thank the reviewer for pointing out the discrepancies in title, introduction, and methods sections of the manuscript on outcome variables. We have corrected this in the revised version of this manuscript.

Comment 2:

Methodology

The description of participants states that parents with “children” above 18 years of age will be excluded. Despite the fact that a 17-year-old is barely referred to as a “child” (but rather as an adolescent), the theoretical background presented seems to be focused on children’s play, and not of adolescents. Thus, the authors have to explain why studies with adolescents should be included in the literature review and, if so, have to adapt the theoretical background in order to capture the developmental transition of play from infancy to adulthood.

Response:

We thank the reviewers for this suggestion. We have changed the criteria in lines 138 and 139 to exclude studies reporting parents of adolescents (above 11 years).

Comment 3:

Some more minor comments:

1. The types of studies included does not exclude previous reviews or meta-analyses – how do the authors go about these studies?

2. What is the reason to search in five different databases and to have three different independent reviewers?

3. The authors state as a limitation that “...since there are numerous terminologies used to describe play and parents’ understanding of it some relevant studies could potentially be missed”. This is why it is important that the authors state their conceptualization of “play” in the introduction and explain in the Methods section how they apply this definition in the literature search.

I hope that the above suggestions help the authors to improve the manuscript.

Response:

1. It was an omission from our part in our exclusion criteria to exclude previous reviews or meta-analyses but plan to review studies that have been included within those reviews if suitable using our inclusion/exclusion criteria. We have clarified this in lines 145 to 148.

2. Since this is a systematic review, we included five different databases to make it as comprehensive as possible. Three independent reviewers are part of this study and their work will help to reduce bias in selection of articles

3. We have added our definition of play to select articles in Methods section (lines 153 to 156) and described the discrepancies between parent and professional understanding of play in the introduction (lines 52 to 60). In addition, as an outcome of our systematic review, we will compile a list of definitions of play mentioned by parents.

The reviewer suggestions have definitely helped to improve the quality of our manuscript and we thank the reviewer.

Reviewer 2:

Comment 1:

The authors have presented their plan for a systematic review of parents' knowledge, competence, awareness, and experience of play with their children. This is an important and interesting topic that will benefit from their review.

Response:

We are encouraged to see the positive comments from the reviewer and thank them for the same

Comment 2:

I have some concerns regarding the current plan that I think need to be reconsidered.

- The age range of the children is too broad. Play between parents and infants/toddlers/pre-schoolers/children/teenagers are all wildly different. Including all ages will confound the results and make interpretations difficult. I would recommend reducing the age range.

Response:

We thank the reviewer for their comments. We have reduced the age range from birth to 11 years. We will organize the results based on studies reporting the following developmental stages: Early childhood (0-5 years) and middle childhood (6-11 years). Depending on the number of studies within these age groups, we will further divide early childhood into infancy, toddlers, and preschoolers.

Comment 3:

- The primary outcomes are on important topics, but it is unclear how they will be operationalised, especially given that the secondary outcome is to identify if there are any measures that exist to measure these constructs.

Response:

We thank the reviewer for seeking this clarification. We have added more clear operational definitions for the outcome variables (lines 167 to 172)

Comment 4

- The planned year range to be searched is too broad. Parenting has changed dramatically even in the last 10 years. Including any study ever published, as appears to be the plan as outlined in the search strategy, will confound the results.

Response:

We agree with the reviewer that parenting attitudes about play has changed over the years. However, we want to identify this as part of the review. If any such trend are observed in parents’ awareness, knowledge, and experiences of play, it will be reported in our results.

Comment 5:

- The authors talk about parents throughout the proposal. Parenting, and especially play, has been shown to be very different for mothers and fathers. This needs to be taken into consideration when collecting and presenting the data and research findings.

Response:

We agree with the reviewer on the difference in perceptions between fathers and mothers on play. We will take this into consideration and present the findings appropriately in the results. We thank the reviewer for suggesting this.

Comment 6:

- There are some minor grammatical errors that need revising.

Response

We have corrected the grammatical errors and have provided a clean version of the manuscript alongside one with tracked changes.

General:

In addition to editorial and reviewer recommended changes, we have added additional references to any changes made and corrected grammatical errors.

Attachment

Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx

Click here for additional data file. (32.6KB, docx)

Decision Letter 1

Emily Freeman

25 Aug 2022

Parents’ awareness, knowledge, and experiences of play and its benefits in child development: a systematic review protocol

PONE-D-21-25685R1

Dear Dr. Dhas,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Emily Freeman

Guest Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

I would like to acknowledge that I participated as a reviewer for the intitial evaluation of this manuscript. Both myself, and the additional reviewer were satisfied with the changes made in response to our intial reviews.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors have done a great job addressing my comments. I would therefore recommend to accept the manuscript for publication.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

**********

Acceptance letter

Emily Freeman

30 Aug 2022

PONE-D-21-25685R1

Parents’ awareness, knowledge, and experiences of play and its benefits in child development: a systematic review protocol

Dear Dr. Dhas:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Emily Freeman

Guest Editor

PLOS ONE

Associated Data

    This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

    Supplementary Materials

    S1 File. PRISMA-P checklist.

    (DOCX)

    Click here for additional data file. (20.9KB, docx)
    S2 File. Search strategy.

    (DOCX)

    Click here for additional data file. (15.7KB, docx)
    S3 File. Data extraction forms.

    (DOCX)

    Click here for additional data file. (19.6KB, docx)
    Attachment

    Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx

    Click here for additional data file. (32.6KB, docx)

    Data Availability Statement

    All relevant data from this study will be made available upon study completion.

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