BackgroundActive transportation to school has been positively associated with various health parameters whereas only sparse evidence exists on risk of injury while commuting to school. This study investigated the overall effectiveness of cycling promotion combined with structural changes on cycling to school.MethodsInterventions at public schools in three different regions in Denmark were based on planned infrastructural changes near schools (e.g. road surface and traffic regulation) and school-motivation for promoting commuter cycling. Participants were pupils from control schools (n = 12) or intervention schools (n = 13). All children (n = 2415) from the 4th and 5th grade were measured at baseline during spring 2010 and at follow-up one year later.ResultsNo significant differences in commuter cycling were detected in the adjusted analyses comparing the intervention with the control group neither when assessed as changes in short term (beta: 0.15 trips/week, p = 0.463) nor when assessed as changes in long term school cycling (beta: −0.02 units, p = 0.485). No differences were observed neither in the incidence of traffic injuries nor in the characteristics of injuries when comparing the control group and the intervention group. Approximately 50 % of all traffic injuries occurred during school transport with most injuries categorized as solo injuries. The only significant predictor of future traffic injuries was previous school transport injuries.ConclusionThis multifaceted school cycling promotion programme did not affect school cycling behaviour or the health parameters assessed. Implementation issues relevant in the planning of future school cycling interventions are discussed in the article. The one year incidence of being involved in a traffic injury was approximately 25 % with almost 50 % of all traffic injuries occurred during school transport. Previous school transport injury predicted future school traffic injuries.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-015-2536-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Despite the well-documented health effects of physical activity, few studies focus on the correlates of leisure-time sports and exercise participation. The present study examined correlations between adolescent sports participation and demographic factors, socioeconomic status (SES) and sociocultural factors. A school-based cross-sectional cluster sample including 6356 Danish fifth- and ninth-grade adolescents from four municipalities were included. Age (younger) and gender (boy) were associated with adolescents' sports participation. Girls were half as likely [odds ratio (OR) 0.49 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.44-0.55] to participate in sports than boys. Adolescents were more likely to participate in sports if they perceived their parents as active in exercise or sports. Adolescents with one or two unemployed parents were 0.75 (95% CI: 0.62-0.89) and 0.75 (95% CI: 0.56-1.00), respectively, less likely to participate in sports than adolescents with two employed parents. In a gender-stratified analysis, parents' occupational status was only a predictor of sports participation in girls. Differences between municipalities in adolescents' sports participation remained significant when controlled for individual factors such as gender, age, parents' background or parents' physical activity. The association between sociocultural and SES was stronger for girls than boys. In conclusion, demographics, SES and sociocultural factors were the best determinants of adolescent sport participation.
This file was dowloaded from the institutional repository Brage NIH -brage.bibsys.no/nih Nielsen, G., Grønfeldt, V., Toftegaard-Støckel, J., Andersen, L. B. (2012 suburban Danish school-children using questionnaire data and accelerometer measures. Family SEP was found to be positively associated to children's participation in organised sport, which could be explained by differences in family capitals. In contrast, this study found no relationship between families' SEP and the amounts of general physical activity in children. This reflected the tendencies for club-organised sport to contribute a relatively small amount to the overall amount of physical activity in children, and for children of low SEP to be equally active in other settings such as school-breaks, day-care and neighbourhood playgrounds.
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