If you need good play to have a good childhood, then we need to know what good play looks like. But studies of play often start from an adult perspective, leaving out kids’ perspectives. To overcome this, scientists surveyed schoolchildren about play and used statistical analysis to identify the themes which came up most often. While some components of ‘good play’ seem to depend on individual preferences, others could be universal.
“Perhaps we have made the first steps to describing the magic and intangible thing we call play in a very new way,” said Dr Andreas Lieberoth of Aarhus University, lead author of the article in Frontiers in Psychology . “This can help educators and carers to nurture different sorts of play, even if they’re not ‘done right’, ‘educational’, or even ‘nice’ according to adult standards.”
“Adults should stop explaining to children how they ought to play,” said co-author Dr Hanne Hede Jørgensen of VIA University College, “and put faith in children’s ability to work things out. We don’t make space for either good or bad play — and we must make space for both, because good play to one child might be bad to another.”
In their own words
The scientists started by interviewing 104 children about play. Using these interviews, they identified recurring elements that described what made play ‘bad’ or ‘good’, and developed a list of 83 statements from the interviews that represented these recurring elements. They then asked 504 other children to recall either a good or a bad play experience and rate it by saying whether they agreed or disagreed with the different statements.
Using principal component analysis, the team then identified two sets of important elements in play: seven critical factors that were generally applicable to as many play experiences as possible, and 22 elements that captured a wider variety of experiences. Because a scale based on the 22 elements would be too long for practical use in research, they used the first seven factors to form the ‘play qualities inventory’. These were social inclusion, imagination, transgression, accessibility, wild and exciting play, having something to do, and something the scientists named ‘play feeling’. This last factor explained more variation in good or bad play experiences than any other.
“If you have ever felt it, you know what it means,” said Lieberoth. “You know it when you see it, like love, evil, or fun. In the words of kids, it’s an experience where you feel that's ‘just totally perfect’, and maybe you ‘just laugh’ or ‘get a smile on your mouth’. When the feeling is not there, play is ‘annoying’, ‘boring’, or maybe you ‘think the rules should be different’.”
Fun and games
High levels of accessibility and play feeling were usually present in good play, but the other five themes could be present in good play or bad play. Importantly, good play experiences weren’t always those supervising adults might consider nice.
“In many cases, good play will have no transgression,” said Lieberoth. “But in some cases, what really makes play fun and special is the ability to go nuts, tease each other, and generally flout the norms of society — or the playground.”
The scientists also learned that disharmony makes play bad. Losing social alignment with other children turned good play into bad play.
“Some of the factors we discovered showed the anti-play kryptonite many of us can recognize from childhood or painfully awkward team-building exercises,” said Lieberoth. “The absence of alignment is highest on my personal list. I have seen many well-intentioned adults try to interject a hapless kid into someone else’s game, basically ruining the shared alignment. Sometimes an adult is needed to scaffold, initiate, inspire, and support, but sometimes they should shut up and go away.”
But the scientists point out that different kids like different things. Good play for one kid could be bad play for another, especially across different cultures. Providing larger-scale play opportunities where children can choose to try different games or activities could maximize inclusion.
“The last thing we want is for people to use this work to make up rules for ‘correct play’,” said Lieberoth. “There is no such thing. I’m convinced that the same protocol would yield different stories, different memories, and different agreements in a different time and place. But within the dataset the findings appear quite robust across many kids, so it could be that some features are indeed universal. I would be very excited to see the scales used in different settings.”
Frontiers in Psychology
Observational study
People
Seven core qualities of good vs. bad play? A principal component analysis of 504 children’s play memories and development of a Play Qualities Inventory (PQI)
27-Mar-2026
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.