Abstract
School active travel contributes to young people's physical activity levels, yet the prevalence is low, and declines with age. Based on determinants from the social-ecological model we investigated changes in school travel behaviour over the transition from childhood to adolescence in participants from the baseline and four-year follow-up of the SPEEDY cohort. Descriptive analysis examined how travel behaviours changed and were related to physical activity. Multinomial logistic regression investigated determinants. Some 38% of participants changed travel mode; 66% from active to passive. Passively traveling participants at follow-up showed a decrease in physical activity. Several social-ecological domains were associated with change. Findings suggest multicomponent interventions are required to support active travel in youth.
Highlights
It is well established that physical activity is positively associated with young people’s health (Landry and Driscol, 2012; Longmuir et al, 2014)
This paper extends this work by using the four-year follow-up data to 1) determine change in school travel behaviours over the transition from childhood to adoles cence, 2) identify the degree to which any change is associated with change in total moderate-to-vigorous physical activity levels, and 3) investigate the determinants of change in travel mode
To determine how travel behaviours changed, the prevalence of each travel mode was calculated at baseline and four-year follow-up
Summary
It is well established that physical activity is positively associated with young people’s health (Landry and Driscol, 2012; Longmuir et al, 2014). Benefits include improved cardiorespiratory function (Baquet et al, 2004), muscle strength (Fritz et al, 2016), body composition (Lazaar et al, 2007), bone mass (Vicente-Rodríguez, 2006), mental health (Larun et al, 2006), academic performance (Trost, 2009), pre vention of cardiovascular disease (Eisenmann et al, 2005) and lowered death rates in adulthood (Ruiz et al, 2009) Despite these benefits, 91% of boys and 98% of girls are not meeting UK recommendations of 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day (Cooper et al, 2015; National Institute for He, 2009). The school commute is a potential target to increase young people’s physical activity (Larouche et al, 2014; Cale and Harris, 2006)
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