4.4. Statement of ethics

adults and independent, by themselves/friends/younger siblings), for parents, gender (Women and men). Independent t-tests were conducted in Excel, comparing the mean values between categorical values. Variable comparisons with distinct mean values and pvalues ≤ 0.05 were considered to be relevant and of statistical significance, and therefore illustrated in the graphs.

Licence was operationalised as actual independent mobility referring to the number of children who travelled independently, perceived licence as children’s perceptions of freedom and actual licence as caretakers independent travel allowance (Kyttä, 2004). The neighbourhood area was defined by a circular buffer of 800 m, 1Km and 1.2Km around the public schools. These were defined as the territorial ranges for young adolescents between the ages of 10, 12 and 14 respectively, by Villanueva et al. (2013); Lopes et al. (2018) and UNICEF (2018), however, such buffers should be further studied in the global south context.

Given the lack of information on children’s play and sociability in the surveys, the study of affordance and attachment was not entirely possible. Common methodologies used in the literature include the study of meaningful/favourite places through participatory mapping and SoftGIS (Kyttä et al., 2018; Lopes et al., 2018), ‘visual, verbal, and written recording methods’ (Weeb Jamme, Bahl and Banerjee, 2018), and interviews (Kyttä, 2004). In turn, this study explored unconventional methods. Questions regarding children’s time outdoors and participation in physical sports were assumed to be associated with play and socialising, as proposed by (Page et al., 2010). Additional clues were given by parents when asked about the places children frequent after school. Furthermore, land-use assessment, brief content analysis of the project’s Facebook page (Vivo Mi Calle, 2020) and google street view, helped spatially illustrate child-friendly facilities and children’s possible favourite places.

4.4. Statement of ethics

This research does not pose any ethical risks. The study is based on anonymised secondary data, collected by the NGO Despacio following Universidad de Los Andes’ ethical guidelines, with consent from all participants and their parents/guardians. The data is not in the public domain, as such Despacio granted access to it for the purpose of the current study. Since the information concerns young people, further steps were taken to protect the respondents’ privacy. While the project is publicly recognised, the research does not mention any particular school, road, landmark by proper names. Furthermore, it does not illustrate specific walking routes or sensible responses which could place participants in danger.