Beyond Distance: Children’s School Travel Mode Choice

Abstract

Background Long distance is a leading environmental barrier to walking to school and requires long-term, multilevel interventions. Meanwhile, childhood obesity remains highly prevalent, calling for more immediate solutions. Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine attitudinal and environmental correlates of walking to the elementary school, controlling for distance. Methods Using parental survey data, 601 child pairs with matched home locations and different school travel modes (walking vs. private automobile) were examined, using conditional logistic regressions. Results Despite the same/similar objectively measured distance and home location, perceptions of distance, sidewalk and traffic conditions, park presence, and convenience of walking differed between walkers and automobile users.Parental attitudes and children's preferences were associated with the odds of walking. Safety concerns (traffic danger, stranger danger, and getting lost) were higher among drivers, but only significant in bivariate analyses. Conclusions To promote walking to school, route/street improvements appear promising, but parallel educational and promotional efforts may be needed to address perceptual and attitudinal barriers.

Assessing the health-related outcomes and correlates of active transportation in children and youth

“…The majority of participants mentioned that they cycled because it's fun, it's faster than alternatives and it's good for fitness and health. Other studies have reported that children's preference for walking or cycling was a strong correlate of AST (Lee et al, 2013;Trapp et al, 2011). …”

“…Similarly, the likelihood that children engage in AST tends to decrease with increasing parental car ownership Roberts et al, 1997). Social norms (Lee et al, 2013;McMillan et al, 2007) and social support from friends have also been shown to be associated with AST (Hohepa et al, 2007;Hume et al, 2009;Panter et al, 2010a;. Adolescents who cycled to/from school mentioned the positive influence of parental role modeling (Orsini & O'Brien, 2006).…”

Past and Present of Active School Transportation: An Exploration of the Built Environment Effects in Toronto, Canada from 1986 to 2006

“…The neighborhoods that are commonly considered "walkable" and safe (e.g., those with small residential blocks, land-use mix, local streets, slow and light traffic, street lights/signs) may encourage walking and/or cycling among children and youth, although empirical findings remain mixed and somewhat inconsistent (Larsen, Gilliland and Hess 2012;McMillan 2007;Mitra and Buliung 2012;Panter et al 2010a). Perceptions of the neighborhood environment, particularly those related to traffic and personal safety, may also influence school travel outcomes (Lee et al 2013;Panter et al 2010b;Timperio et al 2006). The importance of socio-demographic characteristics of a child/youth and his or her household on AST uptake is also well documented.…”

“…The importance of socio-demographic characteristics of a child/youth and his or her household on AST uptake is also well documented. Young children (Lee et al 2013;Mitra, Builiung and Roorda 2010), girls (Larsen et al 2009;Mitra and Buliung 2012), and those with easy access to private automobiles (Lee et al 2013;Mitra and Buliung 2014) may be less likely to walk/cycle to school compared to older children/youths, boys, and those with less or no access to private automobiles. Findings related to household/neighborhood income remain mixed (McMillan 2007;Larsen et al 2009;Mitra and Buliung 2014;Timperio et al 2006).…”

Breaking Out of Surveillance Silos: Integrative Geospatial Data Collection for Child Injury Risk and Active School Transport

“…This approach enables delineation of the routes taken and the PA that occurs in places along this route. GIS and GPS have also been employed to measure distance between home and school in school travel mode behavior, 40,41 while Buliung et al 42 investigated the use of GIS-based shortest path networks between home-school and those reported through sketch maps submitted by participants. Route discordance was identified between the two approaches, indicating the need to use actual routes rather than shortest-path algorithms.…”