Abstract
BackgroundThe school journey may make an important contribution to children’s physical activity and provide exposure to food and physical activity environments. Typically, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been used to model assumed routes to school in studies, but these may differ from those actually chosen. We aimed to identify the characteristics of children and their environments that make the modelled route more or less representative of that actually taken. We compared modelled GIS routes and actual Global Positioning Systems (GPS) measured routes in a free-living sample of children using varying travel modes.MethodsParticipants were 175 13-14 yr old children taking part in the Sport, Physical activity and Eating behaviour: Environmental Determinants in Young people (SPEEDY) study who wore GPS units for up to 7 days. Actual routes to/from school were extracted from GPS data, and shortest routes between home and school along a road network were modelled in a GIS. Differences between them were assessed according to length, percentage overlap, and food outlet exposure using multilevel regression models.ResultsGIS routes underestimated route length by 21.0% overall, ranging from 6.1% among walkers to 23.2% for bus users. Among pedestrians food outlet exposure was overestimated by GIS routes by 25.4%. Certain characteristics of children and their neighbourhoods that improved the concordance between GIS and GPS route length and overlap were identified. Living in a village raised the odds of increased differences in length (odds ratio (OR) 3.36 (1.32-8.58)), while attending a more urban school raised the odds of increased percentage overlap (OR 3.98 (1.49-10.63)). However none were found for food outlet exposure. Journeys home from school increased the difference between GIS and GPS routes in terms of food outlet exposure, and this measure showed considerable within-person variation.ConclusionsGIS modelled routes between home and school were not truly representative of accurate GPS measured exposure to obesogenic environments, particularly for pedestrians. While route length may be fairly well described, especially for urban populations, those living close to school, and those travelling by foot, the additional expense of acquiring GPS data seems important when assessing exposure to route environments.
Highlights
The school journey may make an important contribution to children’s physical activity and provide exposure to food and physical activity environments
Interest in routes is often associated with work on the determinants of active travel [5,6,7], but some research is beginning to look at the opportunity travel to school presents for access to food environments [8,9] and physical activity facilities [4]
Past work has typically relied on assessments of route characteristics based on parents’ and children’s perceptions [10], or using a geographic information system (GIS) to objectively characterise a modelled route to school based on the assumption that children will take the shortest route [4,5,6,7,8,9]
Summary
The school journey may make an important contribution to children’s physical activity and provide exposure to food and physical activity environments. Past work has typically relied on assessments of route characteristics based on parents’ and children’s perceptions [10], or using a geographic information system (GIS) to objectively characterise a modelled route to school based on the assumption that children will take the shortest route [4,5,6,7,8,9]. Until recently these methods have been the only options available to researchers wishing to investigate the location and characteristics of children’s routes to and from school. With the current availability of small, low-cost global positioning system (GPS) devices, it is possible to record and characterise the actual routes children take
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