Abstract

The purpose of this study is to systematically search literature related to children’s playfulness published between 2011 and 2021 in Korea and classify the variables associated with it. The study calculated the average effect size and identified variables with the largest effect size in each domain using 52 studies with 160 correlation effect sizes. The study also conducted sub-group analyses to explore effect size differences according to study characteristics and domains. The average effect size between children’s playfulness and related variables was medium. The variables that had the largest effect size were the child’s happiness and emotional intelligence in the child individual domain and the mother’s acceptance of emotional expression in the maternal domain. When raters of playfulness and corresponding variables were matched, the effect size was three times larger than when they did not. The findings provide aggregated and helpful information regarding children’s playfulness with related variables. It suggests a direction for future study on children’s playfulness and provides information to teachers and parents when promoting children’s playfulness.