Abstract
BackgroundData on longitudinal monitoring of daily physical activity (PA) patterns in youth over successive years is scarce but may provide valuable information for intervention strategies aiming to promote PA.MethodsParticipants were 853 children (starting age ~8 years) recruited from 29 Australian elementary schools. Pedometers were worn for a 7-day period each year over 5 consecutive years to assess PA volume (steps per day) and accelerometers were worn concurrently in the final 2 years to assess PA volume (accelerometer counts (AC) per day), moderate and vigorous PA (MVPA), light PA (LPA) and sedentary time (SED). A general linear mixed model was used to examine daily and yearly patterns.ResultsA consistent daily pattern of pedometer step counts, AC, MVPA and LPA emerged during each year, characterised by increases on school days from Monday to Friday followed by a decrease on the weekend. Friday was the most active and Sunday the least active day. The percentage of girls and boys meeting international recommendations of 11,000 and 13,000 steps/day respectively on a Monday, Friday and Sunday were 36%, 50%, 21% for boys and 35%, 45%, 18% for girls. The equivalent percentages meeting the recommended MVPA of >60 min/day on these days were 29%, 39%, 16% for boys and 15%, 21%, 10% for girls. Over the 5 years, boys were more active than girls (mean steps/day of 10,506 vs 8,750; p<0.001) and spent more time in MVPA (mean of 42.8 vs 31.1 min/day; p<0.001). Although there was little evidence of any upward or downward trend in steps/day from age 8 to 12 years, there was a trend toward lower MVPA, LPA and a corresponding increase in SED from age 11 to 12 years.ConclusionA weekly pattern of PA occurred in children as young as age 8 on a day by day basis; these patterns persisting through to age 12. In addition to supporting previous evidence of insufficient PA in children, our data, in identifying the level and incidence of insufficiency on each day of the week, may assist in the development of more specific strategies to increase PA in community based children.
Highlights
Data on longitudinal monitoring of daily physical activity (PA) patterns in youth over successive years is scarce but may provide valuable information for intervention strategies aiming to promote PA
PA among children is often referred to in the literature in terms of ‘patterns’ and is thought to be ‘habitual’ in nature, the extent to which PA behaviour adheres to patterns or whether these patterns are repetitive to such an extent that they are habitual is not well understood
The objective of the current study was to investigate pedometer-assessed PA over 5 consecutive years, with years 4 and 5 supplemented with concurrently assessed accelerometer data, in a large cohort of elementary school children in order to answer the following questions: (a) do children exhibit a general day to day pattern of PA each week? (b) do daily patterns of PA persist each year? i.e. do they change with age? and (c) what percentage of our Australian cohort of midrange socioeconomic status meet currently recommended daily PA levels, and how is this affected by day of the week?
Summary
Data on longitudinal monitoring of daily physical activity (PA) patterns in youth over successive years is scarce but may provide valuable information for intervention strategies aiming to promote PA. A reported decline in physical activity (PA) among youth [1], coupled with a growing body of evidence supporting the health benefits of PA [2,3], has resulted in an increasing need to understand PA behaviour and patterns among children. Previous cross sectional studies among youth have examined PA patterns in terms of day type (weekday vs weekend) [4,5,6,7,8,9], school-time versus non school-time [10,11] and time spent in relative exercise intensities [6,12,13]. Identification of patterns of activity, in particular those days consistently associated with low or high PA may be important in understanding how interventions are best implemented to reshape the culture of school and weekend days with respect to increasing physical activity in children
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