In this thesis, we investigated the importance of selected environmental factors on the cycling skills of 4-5 year old children. Among the environmental factors, we focused on the immediate environment, where we selected aspects of the physical and social environment. We defined the aspects of the physical environment in terms of cycling infrastructure. We looked at the differences between urban and rural cycling infrastructure. Aspects of the social environment were defined by parents opinions on their children's cycling skills and their attitudes towards cycling.
The sample included 60 parents of pre-school children aged 4-5 years from a kindergarten in Ribnica. The opinions on the children's cycling skills were obtained by means of a questionnaire. The actual cycling skills of the children were determined by means of a test cycling polygon adapted from the Mali sonček sport programme. We included free-riding, cornering and stopping skills.
The analysis of the results shows a different cycling infrastructure between the village and the city. Nevertheless, parents do not make much use of dedicated cycling infrastructure for their children's cycling. However, we did not find differences in children's cycling skills according to different residential locations. The data show that parents have a good knowledge of their children's skills. On average, however, for all cycling skills, parents gave their children lower scores than the actual scores measured on the cycling polygon. Of all the skills, the skill of stopping is the least well known. From the parents' survey responses, it can also be observed that parents who are active in cycling are more likely to involve their children in cycling activities.
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