Abstract
BackgroundMany children do not engage in recommended levels of physical activity (PA), highlighting the need to find ways to increase children’s PA. Process evaluations play an important role in improving the science of randomised controlled trials. We recently reported the results of the Action 3:30 cluster randomised feasibility trial illustrating higher levels of moderate to vigorous intensity PA among boys but not girls. The aim of this paper is to report the process evaluation results including intervention fidelity, implementation, context and how intervention components and trial design could be improved before proceeding to a definitive RCT.MethodsChildren’s session enjoyment was assessed every two weeks. Reasons for non-attendance were provided by questionnaire at the end of the intervention. Post intervention interviews were held with participating teaching assistants (TAs) and school key contacts (KCs), and focus groups were conducted with children in all 10 intervention schools. Interviews and focus groups examined how recruitment and session attendance might be improved and established which elements of the programme that were and were not well received.ResultsData indicated good intervention fidelity with TA’s adopting enjoyment-focussed teaching styles and the sessions improving children’s skills and self-esteem. Several positive aspects of implementation were identified, including high session variety, the opportunity to work in teams, the child-led sessions and the engaging leader style. In terms of context there was evidence that TA’s faced difficulties managing challenging behaviour and that further training in this area was needed. TAs and KCs felt that recruitment could be improved by providing taster sessions during PE lessons and clarifying the days that the clubs would run at the point of recruitment. The programme could be improved to enhance interest for girls, by including training for managing disruptive behaviour and making some activities more age-group appropriate.ConclusionsAction 3.30 showed promise but could be improved by ensuring age appropriate activities, providing more appeal to girls and improving recruitment through taster sessions and early establishment of days of the week it is to be offered on.Trial registrationISRCTN58502739.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-015-1501-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Many children do not engage in recommended levels of physical activity (PA), highlighting the need to find ways to increase children’s PA
The qualitative data were collected at the end of the 20-week intervention and consisted of interviews with the teaching assistants (TAs) who delivered the intervention, interviews with school contacts in both intervention and control schools who facilitated the logistics of the study taking place in their school, and focus groups with intervention participants in all intervention schools
“Because it wasn’t really sports that you would ever have in the Olympics because there was like ...we weren’t like, doing sports that you would really do Discussion The data presented in this paper have shown that the Action 3:30 intervention was implemented reasonably
Summary
Many children do not engage in recommended levels of physical activity (PA), highlighting the need to find ways to increase children’s PA. The aim of this paper is to report the process evaluation results including intervention fidelity, implementation, context and how intervention components and trial design could be improved before proceeding to a definitive RCT. A number of studies have shown that large proportions of children and adolescents do not engage in the current recommendation of an hour of moderateto-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA) per day [2,3,4]. Systematic reviews of physical activity interventions for children have identified that interventions typically yielded small or no improvements in levels of MVPA [6,7]. There is a need to find new, more effective physical activity interventions
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