Does where you live matter? Leisure-time physical activity among Canadian youth: a multiple cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background:The aim of this study was to explore the population-wide distribution in the practice of leisure-time physical activity among Canadian youth and how physical activity level is influenced by contextual features of the environment. Methods:We studied the self-reported leisure-time physical activity of 54 832 Canadians aged 12 to 17 years. Observations were structured according to a 4-level geographic hierarchy. The outcome studied was a dichotomous indicator that referred to achieving (or not) the recommended daily level of leisure-time physical activity. To investigate the influence of the contextual features, we conducted multilevel logistic regressions.Results: For both girls and boys, significant variations were observed between health regions and between neighbourhoods within the provinces. Girls who lived in an urban setting showed lower odds of achieving the recommended physical activity level, as did those surveyed during the winter. Boys surveyed during the winter also showed lower odds of achieving the recommended level, but living in an urban setting had no effect on activity levels. Analysis of province-level residuals showed that girls living in Quebec were less likely to achieve the recommended activity level as compared with the national mean, and girls living in Ontario and British Columbia were more likely to achieve that threshold. Boys living in Ontario were more likely to achieve the recommended activity level as compared with the national mean. Youth had up to a 17% increased chance of achieving the recommended physical activity level if they lived in a context with a higher activity achievement level.Interpretation: Leisure-time physical activity was associated with environmental factors at multiple geographic scales among Canadian youth. The variation was more important at the neighbourhood level. The results provide rationale for further investigation into how leisure-time physical activity is promoted in different contexts. Abstract ResearchResearch CMAJ OPEN CMAJ OPEN, 4(3) E437

A Comparison of Meeting Physical Activity and Screen Time Recommendations between Canadian Youth Living in Rural and Urban Communities: A Nationally Representative Cross-Sectional Analysis

“…Living in rural areas was treated as the referent category for all analyses. We used a model-building approach that added individual, socioeconomic, and seasonal covariates based on theoretical knowledge of potential confounding variables as has been done previously [ 16 ]. Interaction terms between location (urban versus rural) and sex were used to assess whether the associations between location and the odds of meeting the PA, screen time or both recommendations differed by sex.…”

“…In Canada, self-reported data from earlier cycles of the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS), showed only rural-dwelling girls but not boys were more likely to meet the PA recommendation compared to those from urban communities [ 16 ]. Harvey et al (2017) [ 17 ] showed that Canadian children attending schools in larger urban settings were more likely to meet the PA recommendation than those attending schools in smaller urban or rural settings, whereas device-measured data by Nyström et al (2019) [ 18 ] indicated no significant differences in MVPA between urban and rural Canadian children.…”

“…Although device-based, the data from Nyström et al (2019) [ 18 ] were collected in only three regions of Canada, Nadeau et al (2016) reported on older (2003–2012) cycles of the CCHS and only compared PA but not screen time between Canadian youth living in urban versus rural communities. Moreover, these Canadian studies [ 16 , 17 , 18 ] assessed meeting the PA recommendation as the accumulation of at least 60 min of MVPA on six or all seven days of the week, as opposed to averaging the daily MVPA across the week which is currently used for surveillance purposes [ 19 ].…”

Children with congenital heart disease exhibit seasonal variation in physical activity

“…However, subgroup analysis was not performed due to insufficient power in each geographic region. Such analysis would also not be meaningful as it does not account for seasonal participation in physical activity, daylight hours [ 33 ], and other geographic factors (rural vs. urban) [ 34 ].…”