OnePoll/72Point were approached by The Academy PR who were working with Disney to uncover opinions, habits and behaviours amongst younger children from the point of view of parents. The aims were to discover the importance of playtime, frequency of playtime, types of playtime, objects of play and things that may prevent play. We also wanted to understand if there was any differences in playtime between different countries.
For this project, OnePoll interviewed 1,000 parents of children agreed 2 to 8 years in 6 different markets. This multi-country piece of research included the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Poland and Germany. We included demographic splits on child’s age, child’s gender, parent’s gender and region as we felt including these would uncover some interesting insights amongst attitudes to play and types of play e.g., between girls and boys, but also mothers and fathers.
We asked respondents to consider one of their children in the 2 to 8 range (if they had more than 1) to ensure there was no confusion amongst respondents who may have children with different attitudes to play. In the UK survey, on average, parents played with their child 2.83 times in a typical day. When asking parents to think about imaginative playtime, almost half (49%) felt that it was important because it creates joy and happiness in their child, with 48% also stating it was important in teaching them to improve their social skills.
We also asked about which careers would benefit from imaginative play, with the top answers being 1) Science (28%), 2) Engineering (28%) and 3) Teaching (28%). Types of play parents prioritised above others to influence their child’s future were 1) Reading (33%), 2) Construction related play (27%) and 3) Technology related play (27%). Over a third (34%) stated that being too busy was one of the top reasons why they don’t play with their child, followed by a lack of energy (33%) and too much housework (32%).
OnePoll delivered data tables for each country. Based on these, creatives from 72Point wrote up the key data points into news stories. The campaign received 16 pieces of coverage and was featured in The Times.
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