Environmental opportunities facilitating cognitive development in preschoolers: development of a multicriteria index.

Access to environmental opportunities can favor children's learning and cognitive development. The objectives is to construct an index that synthesizes environmental learning opportunities for preschoolers considering the home environment and verify whether the index can predict preschoolers' cognitive development. A quantitative, cross-sectional, exploratory study was conducted with 51 preschoolers using a multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT).

Physical environmental opportunities for active play and physical activity level in preschoolers: a multicriteria analysis.

Background: Active play opportunities seems to influence the level of physical activity during childhood. However, a gap remains about which environmental opportunities including the daycare physical environment could have a positive impact on the level of physical activity in preschoolers.

Objectives: (1) To develop an index to measure the environmental opportunities of free active play for preschoolers of middle-income countries; (2) to check the relationship and contribution of the index to explain objectively the level of physical activity.