Abstract
Physical activity (PA) patterns track from childhood through to adulthood. The study aimed to determine the levels and correlates of sedentary time (ST), total PA (TPA), and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) in preschool-aged children. We conducted cross-sectional analyses of 1052 children aged three-to-four-years-old from six studies included in the International Children’s Accelerometry Database. Multilevel linear regression models adjusting for age, gender, season, minutes of wear time, and study clustering effects were used to estimate associations between age, gender, country, season, ethnicity, parental education, day of the week, time of sunrise, time of sunset, and hours of daylight and the daily minutes spent in ST, TPA, and MVPA. Across the UK, Switzerland, Belgium, and the USA, children in our analysis sample spent 490 min in ST per day and 30.0% and 21.2% of children did not engage in recommended daily TPA (≥180 min) and MVPA (≥60 min) guidelines. There was evidence for an association between all 10 potential correlates analyzed and at least one of the outcome variables; average daily minutes spent in ST, TPA and/or MVPA. These correlates can inform the design of public health interventions internationally to decrease ST and increase PA in preschoolers.
Highlights
Physical activity (PA) patterns track from childhood through to adulthood [1], making preschool-aged children an important population to target for physical activity interventions
Data by each hour suggest that the minutes spent in sedentary time (ST) decreased throughout the day, and the dips in total PA (TPA) and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) levels generally observed between 11:00 and 15:00 were more prominent on weekdays compared to weekends, and in the USA compared to the other three countries
The dips in TPA and MVPA levels were more prominent on weekdays compared to weekends from 11:00 to 15:00 which may be representative of preschool lunchtime and napping procedures; we do not have preschool attendance data available to draw such conclusions
Summary
Physical activity (PA) patterns track from childhood through to adulthood [1], making preschool-aged children an important population to target for physical activity interventions. Current Canadian [3] and Australian [4] guidelines advise that children aged two-to-five-years-old should not be sedentary for periods of over 60 min at a time. The Canadian, Australian, USA [5], and UK [6] guidelines specify that children under the age of five, who can walk unaided, should be physically active for at least 180 min per day and should spend at least 60 min of this time in moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) [3,4]. Two studies from the UK [7,8] found that 100% of children aged three-to-four-years met the recommended ≥180 min a day of total PA (TPA) whereas a Belgian [9], Australian [10], and Canadian [11] study found that
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