Assessment of intensity, prevalence and duration of everyday activities in Swiss school children: a cross-sectional anal
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BioMed Central
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Assessment of intensity, prevalence and duration of everyday activities in Swiss school children: a cross-sectional analysis of accelerometer and diary data Bettina Bringolf-Isler*1, Leticia Grize1, Urs Mäder2, Nicole Ruch2, Felix H Sennhauser3 and Charlotte Braun-Fahrländer1 Address: 1Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, Steinengraben 49, 4051 Basel, Switzerland, 2Federal Institute of Sports, 2532 Magglingen, Switzerland and 3University Children's Hospital, Steinwiesstrasse 75, 8032 Zürich Switzerland Email: Bettina Bringolf-Isler* - [email protected]; Leticia Grize - [email protected]; Urs Mäder - [email protected]; Nicole Ruch - [email protected]; Felix H Sennhauser - [email protected]; Charlotte BraunFahrländer - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 5 August 2009 International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 2009, 6:50
doi:10.1186/1479-5868-6-50
Received: 6 January 2009 Accepted: 5 August 2009
This article is available from: http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/6/1/50 © 2009 Bringolf-Isler et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Background: Appropriately measuring habitual physical activity (PA) in children is a major challenge. Questionnaires and accelerometers are the most widely used instruments but both have well-known limitations. The aims of this study were to determine activity type/mode and to quantify intensity and duration of children's everyday PA by combining information of a time activity diary with accelerometer measurements and to assess differences by gender and age. Methods: School children (n = 189) aged 6/7 years, 9/10 years and 13/14 years wore accelerometers during one week in winter 2004 and one in summer 2005. Simultaneously, they completed a newly developed time-activity diary during 4 days per week recording different activities performed during each 15 min interval. For each specific activity, the mean intensity (accelerometer counts/min), mean duration per day (min/d) and proportion of involved children were calculated using linear regression models. Results: For the full range of activities, boys accumulated more mean counts/min than girls. Adolescents spent more time in high intensity sports activities than younger children (p < 0.001) but this increase was compensated by a reduction in time spent playing vigorously (p = 0.04). In addition, adolescents spent significantly more time in sedentary activities (p < 0.001) and accumulated less counts/min during these activities than younger children (p = 0.007). Among moderate to vigorous activities, children spent most time with vigorous play (43 min/day) and active transportation (56 min/day). Conclusion: The combination of accelerometers a
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