RESEARCH NOTE
Where Does "96% of Families Who Play Games Feel Closer" Come From?
We could not find a release, a sample or a method behind the 96% figure. Most of the other family play statistics people quote come from surveys paid for by companies that sell the activity.
The 96% figure
The claim gets passed around in this form: 96% of families who play games together feel closer.
We tried to trace it. The only source we could open is a secondhand one, a 2013 post on a board game website (The Board Game Family, 2013). On that account the figure comes from a survey by Hasbro, a game maker, from around 2013 and tied to its Family Game Night campaign.
- We could not find an original release.
- We could not find a sample size, meaning how many families were asked.
- We could not find a method, meaning who was asked and how.
- We could not find a matching figure for families who do not play games.
So we cannot say the number is wrong. We can say we could not check it, and we do not cite it as research.
The LEGO survey
This one we could open, as a press release (The LEGO Group, 2018). The LEGO Group, a toy maker, published its Play Well Report in August 2018. The release says it surveyed "nearly 13,000 parents and children" in nine countries.
Its headline finding describes "nine out of 10 families (88%) who play for five hours or more a week claiming to be happy, while, of those who play for less than five hours, only seven out of 10 (75%) say they are happy."
That is a gap of 13 points in how two groups describe themselves. Three things limit what it can tell you.
- The families sorted themselves. Nobody assigned some to play more. Families with five spare hours a week may differ from other families in many ways.
- No controls are described. The release does not describe any adjustment for income, family size or anything else.
- The method is not on the release. It does not state which research firm ran the survey or how people were chosen. We read the press release only, not the full report.
The release also does not give a percentage for feeling closer among the families who play more. The nearest figure it gives is that 64% of parents feel "connected to their children" through play.
The Disney survey
Disney Parks, which runs theme parks, published its Disney Time Survey in 2013 (Disney Parks release, 2013). It reported that parents call 82 percent of vacation time "quality time". It also reported that families eat 19 meals together on a seven-day vacation, against 10 in a week at home.
This survey at least states its method. The firm Kelton asked 1,004 US parents of children aged 5 to 17, by phone numbers dialed at random, from January 8 to 21, 2013. The stated margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 points.
What it measures is parents' impressions of vacation time. It says nothing about whether a family is closer afterward.
How a survey ends up in an official report
A soft number can travel a long way. Here is one chain we followed, reading each document in full.
- In 2018 the Children's Commissioner for England published a report on play. It said: "although the evidence base is not as developed, research suggests that children’s play benefits the wider family and community too, through improved family wellbeing, reduced anti-social behaviour and vandalism, and even increased volunteering and social action." (Children's Commissioner for England, 2018).
- Its source for that sentence is a 2014 review commissioned by a play advocacy body (Children's Play Policy Forum, 2014). That review is frank about itself: "There are significant gaps in the evidence base, mainly due to difficulties in carrying out empirical studies but also due to limitations in this review."
- The review's evidence on family well-being is this: "The American NGO KaBOOM! carried out market research into parental attitudes about playgrounds, and found links to self-reported measures of family well-being." The group named there is a US playground charity. The review gives no sample or method for that market research.
So an official report's line about family well-being rests on a review, and the review rests on one piece of market research by a playground charity.
A number we could not verify at all
You may see a claim that UK parents play with their children for 19 minutes a day. We did not find that figure in the official UK release we opened. Search results pointed to a fact-check page that says the figure is an average across all people and is widely misquoted. We did not open that page, so we cannot confirm either the number or the correction.
What these surveys cannot show
The surveys above share four features.
- No comparison group. To learn whether an activity made a difference, you need answers from similar families who do not do it. The LEGO release compares two groups, but the groups chose themselves.
- No before and after. None of them measured a family, changed something, and measured again.
- No outside review. None was checked by independent researchers before it was published.
- A sponsor with a stake. Each was paid for by an organization that sells or promotes the activity.
All of them measure what people say they feel.
This does not mean the companies made anything up. It means a survey of this kind cannot answer the question the saying asks.
The full picture
This page covers one question. The whole verdict on the saying, with its history and every source, is in our research paper: A family that plays together stays together: is it true?