Abstract
BackgroundPhysical activity has been associated with many benefits throughout the life course. As levels of physical activity appear to be insufficient in large populations, the development of effective interventions to promote or maintain activity levels in young people are therefore of key public health concern. Physical activity intervention research in young people is challenging, but this should not be a reason to continue conducting inferior quality evaluations. This paper highlights some of the key issues that require more careful and consistent consideration to enable future research to achieve meaningful impact.DiscussionThis paper critically evaluates, amongst others, current research practice regarding intervention development, targeting, active involvement of the target population, challenge of recruitment and retention, measurement and evaluation protocols, long-term follow-up, economic evaluation, process evaluation, and publication. It argues that funders and researchers should collaborate to ensure high quality long-term evaluations are prioritised and that a trial’s success should be defined by its quality, not its achieved effect.SummaryThe conduct and publication of well-designed evaluations of well-defined interventions is crucial to advance the field of youth physical activity promotion and make us better understand which intervention strategies may or may not work, why, and for whom.
Highlights
Physical activity has been associated with many benefits throughout the life course
The past 20 years has seen an explosion of publications on physical activity interventions in young people
In this paper, we have outlined some of the key areas we believe the research field of physical activity promotion in young people may want to focus their efforts on in order to increase the quality and potential impact of the work produced
Summary
Investing in the future To map or not to map? The use of structured processes to guide intervention development is becoming increasingly more common, which we welcome [18, 19]. As project delays are not uncommon (delayed ethical approval, challenging recruitment, or intervention implementation issues), this time limitation encourages some to prioritise collecting baseline data in intervention participants Understandable, this imbalance can compromise data comparability and study power. Despite best intentions, differing contexts such as practical challenges and personal/institutional preferences commonly lead to varied delivery across settings Understanding this variation, its reasons and consequences using mixed methods research in the context of a high quality evaluation will improve interpretation of intervention effects, and the development and delivery of future interventions. A key prerequisite is the inclusion of measures along the hypothesised causal pathway, included at appropriate times and in all study populations This should include measures of potential mediating mechanisms, the specific behaviours targeted, objectively measured total physical activity, and objective measures of more distal outcomes. By applying consistent and rigorous processes to the statistical analyses and subsequent unrestricted reporting of the results, whatever they are, can we truly understand the extent and complexity of the intervention effects
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