Exploring the Causal Effects of Outdoor Play on School Readiness of Preschoolers in the Klang Valley, Malaysia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript presented is complete and with a topic of interest for the academic and scientific field. The introduction is well presented, justifying the importance of free play and the concreteness of the need to carry out the research in the chosen place. The research offers good results and adequate statistics. However, when reading the discussion and conclusions sections, there is a lack of more quotations to compare this study with other previous studies. For example, only citation number 76 is detected in the discussion, and this turns out to be rather poor.  As a suggestion to improve the manuscript, it is recommended that the authors look for more research that analyzes this topic and that allows contrasting results between different educational stages and different countries.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

A very interesting and important topic of this paper regarding play, outdoor play, the importance of the outdoor learning environment and the general development of children. Outdoor learning through play has many benefits, especially as a developmental foundation for environmental values, sensitivity and behavior, but also for academic performance, transition from preschool to school, etc. In this regard, this work is very interesting, well written, and has great potential for further research. The literature review, introduction, and methodology are well written, as is the presentation of results and conclusions. All major theoretical explanations of the constructs that were included in the research are presented and well referenced. Even with a small sample (n= 72), the statistical calculations are valid, and the conclusion identifies limitations that should be considered. I hope the author will repeat the same study with a much larger sample and incorporating the same constructs and results of this study. I am not an expert in the field SEM, so perhaps another reviewer should look more closely at the statistics, but even if the model does not fit, these results are very important for further study. The correlations are also important and highlight the importance of playgrounds, outdoor play, holistic child development, and school readiness. The effects are confirmed, although more research and confirmation is needed. But, as I said, this study has great potential to be applied in other studies, to make comparisons, cross-culturally, with larger samples, etc.

I liked this paper very much and I think it should be published.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Recommendations for authors

In lines 677-678 it is mentioned that: “The findings from this study confirm five of the significant positive paths found by [76], with the other two paths being found to be positive but insignificant in this study. The results of this study which confirm the findings of other studies include:”. Which are these other studies (apart from your study 76, following the same design/analysis)?

In lines 701-704 it is mentioned that: „In view of the practical values of the findings, important stakeholders such as preschool providers, preschool designers and preschool educators, as well as parents should ensure appropriate outdoor play yards are provided in preschools for children’s full development and academic learning, especially children with physical disabilities; as well as for school readiness of pre-schoolers.” The study findings represents the view perspective of the preschool operators. Other study design including impact on pre-schoolers (pre-schoolers evaluation), parent’s perspectives, etc, would provide a much more accurate overview of the topic. These aspects would have been interesting to have been evaluated and I consider that they should at least be mentioned in the limitations of the study section (besides other study limitations).

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf