Abstract

Objective Play is crucial for healthy child development; yet, the time dedicated to free play during the pre-school years has decreased in both school and home environments. Parental beliefs influence the activities in which children engage in daily life; therefore, exploring these beliefs is a first step to understand possible reasons for the decreased frequency of free play. Instruments developed for this purpose are scarce and, to date, none of them is available in Spanish. We adapted and assessed the psychometric properties of the Perceptions of Play Scale (PPS) and developed the Spanish version of the instrument (i.e., PPS-S). Method We followed Beaton and colleagues' Guidelines for the cross-cultural adaptation of self-report measures, which describes two stages, namely translation and adaptation of the instrument, and assessment of its psychometric properties. During the first stage, a panel of 5 experts developed the preliminary version of the PPS-S. This version of the scale was piloted in a sample of 28 early childhood educators and parents of preschool children, whose feedback informed the development of the final version of the instrument. During the second stage, 452 parents of pre-school children completed the PPS-S to assess its psychometric properties. Results An Exploratory Factor analysis showed high to excellent reliabilities for the three PPS-S subscales and the complete questionnaire. The PPS-S is a valuable, culturally sensitive tool for exploring parental beliefs about three aspects of play (i.e., frequency, playful character, and academic contribution) and could contribute to studies to promote this activity in Chilean children.