Summary: What makes play “good”? While adults often judge play by its educational value or “niceness,” a new study went straight to the source: the children themselves. Researchers surveyed hundreds of schoolchildren to identify the core elements of a great play experience.
They discovered a “Play Qualities Inventory” consisting of seven critical factors, including a mysterious, nearly universal “play feeling.” The findings suggest that “good play” often involves “transgression”—going wild, teasing, and flouting social norms—and that well-meaning adult intervention is often the “kryptonite” that ruins the magic.
Key Facts
- The Play Qualities Inventory: Scientists identified seven universal factors that define the play experience: social inclusion, imagination, transgression, accessibility, wild/exciting play, having something to do, and “play feeling.”
- The “Play Feeling”: This was the most significant factor. Described by kids as something that is “just totally perfect” where you “just laugh,” it is an intangible state similar to love or fun that adults often recognize but cannot easily define.
- The Power of Transgression: “Good play” isn’t always “nice.” For many children, the ability to “go nuts” and break playground or societal rules is what makes the experience special.
- Anti-Play “Kryptonite”: The study found that “disharmony” or a loss of social alignment—often caused by adults trying to force a child into a game—is what turns good play into bad play.
Source: Frontiers
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.”
Key Questions Answered:
A: The researchers call this transgression. For children, play is a safe space to test boundaries and flout the norms of the “adult world.” Teasing, being a bit wild, or “going nuts” isn’t necessarily a sign of bad behavior; it’s often the very thing that makes the play feel “totally perfect.”
A: You’ll know it when you see it. It’s characterized by spontaneous laughter and a sense of total immersion. If a child says the game is “boring” or starts arguing about the rules excessively, the “play feeling” has likely vanished, replaced by “disharmony.”
A: Sometimes, yes. The study found that forced social alignment—like an adult interjecting a “hapless kid” into an existing game—can act as “anti-play kryptonite.” Unless there’s a safety issue, the researchers suggest that adults should often “shut up and go away” to let kids work out their own social alignment.
Editorial Notes:
- This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
- Journal paper reviewed in full.
- Additional context added by our staff.
About this child development research news
Author: Angharad Brewer Gillham
Source: Frontiers
Contact: Angharad Brewer Gillham – Frontiers
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“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)” by Andreas Lieberoth, Pernille Strand, Astrid Lehrmann, Helle Marie Skovbjerg, Hanne Hede Jørgensen, Jens-Ole Jensen, Janne Hedegaard Hansen, Anne-Lene Sand, and Andreas Roepstorff. Frontiers in Psychology
DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1690952
Abstract
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)
Introduction:
This study presents two factor structures suggesting that the qualities and features that children ascribe to subjectively good and bad play situations can be broken down to a relatively low number of central factors. Attempts to model or quantify play have often focused on behaviors, developmental abilities, and pedagogical functions, rather than situational characteristics seen from the child’s perspective. Qualitative studies focused on children’s experiences, on the other hand, often fail to draw patterns across large numbers of children and situations.
Methods:
504 primary school students were recalled a recent good or bad play situation, and were asked to match these with short sample statements detailing similar experiences previously collected using episodic interviews with 104 individuals in the age group. Custers of related situational features were then extracted using principal component analysis (PCA).
Results:
Clusters consisting of 22 and 7 unique dimensions were identified in the dataset. While some emerging qualities of play like ‘being silly’ or ‘keeping boundaries’ appear uniquely related to discrete activities and preferences, more general factors including ‘social unity’, having ‘a role to play’, being ‘allowed in’, and feeling equipped to participate ‘well enough’, emerge as highly stable dimensions defining good or bad play experiences for children across grades, schools and types of play.
Discussion:
and practical application: Findings were combined to propose a seven-dimensional ‘Play Qualities Inventory’ (PQI) for self-report by children ages five to eleven, while the broader backdrop of smaller unique factors provide a new and grounded understanding for discussing the multidimensionality of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ play as seen through the eyes of children.
