Longitudinal and prospective studies of parental correlates of physical activity in young people: A systematic review

Abstract

Literature in physical activity (PA) has demonstrated many positive health outcomes for young people and has found that parents are a significant influence over their child's PA behaviour. This paper thus aims to review longitudinal and prospective studies on parental correlates of PA in young people. A total of 11 papers were identified. Studies included those with samples aged three to 18 years of age, having a measure of the young person's PA, used a prospective or longitudinal research design, measured a parental correlate of young people's PA and were published before October 2010. Characteristics such as nationality of participants, length of study and recruitment methods were extracted. Quality of studies was also assessed. A total of two demographic, four behavioural and five psychological correlates were found, however, most studies involved mainly white middle-class participants, with most of them being volunteers. It was found that majority of positive correlates involves the white middle-class participants. Further research is required to establish a pattern in terms of the influence of parents' culture, nationality and socio-economic status. The child elicitation pathway was brought up in one of the study which highlighted the importance for a more proportionally represented sample. Perception of parent's PA was also found to be significant, however, none of the studies controlled for the quality of the relationship shared between the parent and child. Intensities of PA were not consistent and this review concludes that there is a need for a standardised intensity of PA to make future reviews more conclusive.