Abstract
BackgroundSwimming ability among children in the city of Malmö, Sweden is strongly affected by socioeconomic differences. We investigated to what extent mediating health and lifestyle factors, such as children’s eating, sleeping and physical activity habits, as well as the characteristics of the social and working environment at both school and home, could explain the socioeconomic gradient in swimming ability.MethodsOur study population included children who started their first-grade school-year in 2012 or 2013 at any of the public primary schools of Malmö, Sweden. Cross-sectional, self-reported questionnaire-based data about health status and swimming ability in the fourth grade (age 10) were included from the Pupil Health Database (ELSA) for 3468 children.ResultsChildren’s self-reported swimming ability was strongly associated with both individual- and school-based sociodemographic variables. Nine health, lifestyle and environmental variables were identified as potential mediators and included in the final model. Four of these variables, “Activity”, “Outdoor time”, “Social relationships at home and on the free time”, and “Positivity about future”, were significantly and positively associated with children’s ability to swim.ConclusionsSocial support, optimism for the future and an active lifestyle were positively associated with children’s swimming skills; however, compared to the socioeconomic factors, these health- and lifestyle factors contributed very little. It is possible, that interventions concerning children’s swimming ability in lower socioeconomic neighbourhoods, should in addition to children’s swimming lessons, target the whole families with the goal of increasing their possibilities for socialising and engaging in different kinds of recreational activities.
Highlights
Swimming ability among children in the city of Malmö, Sweden is strongly affected by socioeconomic differences
Variables related to school environment (“Mental wellbeing at school”, “Work environment at school”, “Social relations at school”) and the individual eating and sleeping habits (“Eating regularity score”, “Sleep score”) were not associated with swimming ability in Model B
Sex Female Male Social Prerequisite Index (IQL) Very high High Low Very low School Deprivation Index (IQL) Very low Low High Very high Activity score Outdoor time score Eating regularity score Sleep score Mental wellbeing at school Work environment at school Social relations at school Social relations at home and during free time Positivity about future to increase the fit and the percentage of correctly classified estimates in our statistical model, compared to when only sociodemographic variables were included to the model
Summary
Swimming ability among children in the city of Malmö, Sweden is strongly affected by socioeconomic differences. Failing the swimming test in ninth grade may results in incomplete school grades and have a negative impact on the individual’s chances to enter upper secondary school programmes Despite it being part of the school curriculum, large differences in swimming ability in children exist between different Swedish municipalities, with low swimming ability being more common in areas with a high proportion of families with a low socioeconomic status and immigrant background [4,5,6]. Pilgaard et al 2019 [4] investigated whether the introduction of a community-level swimming intervention program in public primary schools, year 2014 in the city of Malmö, Sweden, improved the swimming ability among children with poor socioeconomic status. Pilgaard et al found that the intervention introduced in the second grade did not decrease the socioeconomy-related differences in children’s swimming ability in the fourth grade, at least not in the first cohort exposed to the intervention based on the self-reports [4]
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