Parental concerns in facilitating children’s physical activity participation in Hong Kong

This study examines the parental concerns in facilitating their children's physical activity participation in Hong Kong. By adopting a qualitative approach, 22 parents (10 fathers and 12 mothers), randomly chosen from in a larger study examining 802 (aged 9 to 16) children's physical activity engagement, were invited for a semi-structured interview. It is believed that these parents could represent the typicality of Hung Kong parents in increasing our understanding of the study's focus. Interview data were analyzed by using an open coding system to identify meaningful pieces of information within the comprehensive text segment (Tesch, 1990). Three themes emerged from the interview data and results in relation to Confucianism showed that parental long working hours, safety issues and over emphasize in children's academic pursuits were found to be their major concerns in facilitating children's further engagement in physical activities. Specifically, fathers and mothers were found to differ in their safety concerns for their children's physical activity involvement. Future interventions aiming at solving the suggested parental concerns could increase children's physical activity participation.