Parent and Child Perceptions of Barriers to Active School Commuting

Examining associations between physical activity context and children meeting daily physical activity guidelines: the role of outdoor play, sports, and other organized activities

Background

Less than one-quarter of US children meet physical activity (PA) guidelines. Understanding the context in which PA occurs and how these contexts may play a role in meeting PA guidelines is an essential step toward developing effective behavioral interventions. The purpose of this study was to examine associations between PA context (sports participation, participation in other organized physical activities, active travel to school, and outdoor play) and the number of days children met PA guidelines in a representative sample of children living in Texas.

Methods

We analyzed cross-sectional data from a statewide sample of fourth-grade children in Texas who completed the 2019-2020 Texas School Physical Activity and Nutrition (Texas SPAN) survey. The Texas SPAN survey was designed to monitor the statewide prevalence of overweight/obesity among school children and assess habitual self-reported obesity-related behaviors, including diet and PA. Weighted Poisson regression models were employed to examine the associations between PA contexts (sports participation, participation in other organized physical activities, active travel to school, and outdoor play) and the number of days children met PA guidelines, adjusting for sex, race/ethnicity, overweight/obesity, urban-rural status, and economic disadvantage.

Results

A total of 16.7% of fourth-grade children met physical activity guidelines every day during the week (mean age = 9.4 ± 0.6 years; female = 48.7, 51.8% Hispanic, mean days meeting PA guideline = 3.6 ± 2.3 days). One in ten (11.2%) children did not meet daily PA guidelines on any day of the week, and 72.1% met them between 1 and 6 days. Participating in sports (b = 0.22, 95%CI:0.14, 0.30), any other organized physical activities (b=0.13, 95%CI:0.017, 0.19), and playing outdoors 1-3 days (b = 0.25, 95%CI:0.04, 0.46) and 4-7 days in the past week (b = 0.77, 95%CI:0.57, 0.97) was significantly and positively associated with the number of days children met PA guidelines.

Conclusion

Participating in sports, participating in other organized physical activities, and playing outdoors may beneficially influence the number of days children meet PA guidelines. PA programs should consider these contextual factors and investigate how to promote organized activities and outdoor play effectively and appropriately among children.

Validating the Perceived Active School Travel Enablers and Barriers-Parent (PASTEB-P) Questionnaire to Support Intervention Programming and Research

A child's ability to participate in active school travel (AST) is complicated by several factors. Of particular note are parental controls, which are informed by their perceptions of the local built and social environments, assessments of their child's skills, and convenience preferences, among other considerations. However, there is currently a lack of AST-specific scales that include validated parental perception measures related to such notable barriers and enablers, or those that tend to frame their AST decision-making processes. Framed within the social-ecological model of health behaviour, the aims of the present paper were thus threefold, specifically to (1) outline and test the construct validity of measures delineating parental perceptions of barriers and enablers to AST, (2) evaluate the reliability and consistency of the developed measures, and (3) connect these measures to develop broader constructs for use in the Perceived Active School Travel Enablers and Barriers-Parent (PASTEB-P) questionnaire. To achieve these aims, a mixed-methods approach featuring cognitive interviews and surveys, along with qualitative (thematic analysis) and quantitative (Cohen's Kappa, McDonald's Omega, and confirmatory factor analysis) analyses, was applied across two studies. The validation processes of the two studies resulted in the development of fifteen items comprising seven distinct constructs (barriers: AST Skills, Convenience, Road Safety, Social Safety, and Equipment Storage; enablers: Supportive Environment and Safe Environment) related to parental perceptions of AST. The developed PASTEB-P questionnaire can be used to inform and evaluate AST intervention programming and can be applied for AST research purposes.

Moderating Influence of Home Location and School Type across Time on Cardiometabolic Risk and Active School Commuting: A Five-Year Longitudinal Study

Background: We examined the moderating influence of home location and school type across time on cardiometabolic risk and active school commuting over 5 years in a sample of children from southern Brazil. Methods: We recruited a sample of children (n = 154; baseline age = 9.6 ± 1.5 years old; 56.8% female) who were followed for 5 years from 2011/2012 to 2016/2017. We collected home location, school type, and school commute data using self-report methods and collected cardiometabolic risk measures to calculate a cardiometabolic composite risk score (cMetSyn). General and generalized linear mixed effects models were employed to examine the moderating influence of home location and school type across time on cardiometabolic risk and active school commuting. Results: We found a significant three-way home location × school type × time interaction on cMetSyn scores (b = 0.62, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.13-1.12, p = 0.014), indicating that children who were living within rural areas and enrolled in state schools during 2016/2017 had higher cardiometabolic risk compared with children enrolled in municipal schools and living in urban areas at the end of the study. Additionally, we found that children living in rural areas had an 86% lower rate of active school commuting compared with students living in urban areas (rate ratio = 0.14, 95% CI: 0.07-0.32, p < 0.001). Conclusions: The results suggest that Brazilian children enrolled in state schools and living in rural areas had higher cardiometabolic risk scores at the end of the study and that southern Brazilian children residing in rural areas had a much lower rate of actively commuting to school.