A longitudinal study of children’s outside play using family environment and perceived physical environment as predictors

Abstract

BackgroundA natural and cheap way of increasing children’s physical activity is stimulating unstructured outside play.PurposeThis study examined whether characteristics of the family and perceived physical environment were associated with the duration of children’s outside play.MethodsParents participating in the “Be Active, Eat Right” cluster RCT control group (N = 2007) provided information on potential predictors of outside play (i.e. family and perceived physical environment) of their 5-year-old child by questionnaire. Child outside play was assessed by parental reports both at five and seven years. Linear regression analyses, adjusted for seasonality, were performed to evaluate associations between potential predictors and child outside play. Linear mixed models were fitted to evaluate the relationship between potential predictors and the development of outside play over two years, with season entered as a random factor.ResultsFamily environment was the strongest construct predicting child outside play, while parent perceived physical environment had no significant association with child outside play. Parental habit strength and the presence of rules were the strongest predictors of increased outside play. Parent perceived difficulty in improving child outside play was the strongest predictor of decreased outside play.ConclusionFamily environment predicted child outside play and not perceived physical environment. Parental rules and habit strength regarding improving outside play were associated with an improvement of child’s engagement in outside play.

Playability: Built and Social Environment Features That Promote Physical Activity Within Children

“…Half of the studies were from North America (12 from the USA, one from Canada) [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43], four were from Australia [44][45][46][47], three from the Netherlands [48][49][50], two from Belgium [51, 52•] and one each from the UK [53•], Portugal [54], Spain [55] and Norway [56]. The majority of the studies (n=22) included crosssectional analyses only; four studies included a prospective design [33, 48, 49, 53•] and two included both crosssectional and prospective analyses [33,48]. Sample sizes ranged from 107 to 18,900.…”

“…Remmers et al [48], for example, also examined family environment variables such as parental attitudes, rules and modelling of physical activity in their final statistical models, and these variables had stronger associations with physical activity than parents perceptions of the neighbourhood environment. Consistent with ecological models [12], more proximal individual and inter-personal factors would be expected to have stronger associations with physical activity than neighbourhood level factors.…”

Places where children are active: A longitudinal examination of children's physical activity

“…Parental factors influencing children’s outdoor play include safety concerns due to presence of negative social influences and traffic, attitudes towards active play, level of a child’s independence, neighborhood social networks and parental rules (Remmers et al, 2014; Veitch et al, 2006; Xu et al, 2014). Prior studies have found that higher levels of perceived neighborhood social cohesion were associated with children spending more time in outdoor play (Aarts et al, 2010; Kimbro et al, 2011) and social cohesion, collective socialization, more neighborhood social ties and neighborhood exchange were positively associated with children’s PA (Franzini et al, 2009).…”

A randomized clinical trial of the effects of parent mentors on early childhood obesity: Study design and baseline data

“…Activity was assessed with two questions adapted from other early childhood studies [29]: “In a typical week, how many days does your child play outside or do other physical activity?” And: “On the days when your child plays outside or does physical activity, about how long do they play or do other activity?” Child sleep was assessed by parental report using standardized questions[30]. …”