Environmental and socio-demographic associates of children’s active transport to school: a cross-sectional investigation from the URBAN Study

Abstract

BackgroundActive transport (e.g., walking, cycling) to school (ATS) can contribute to children’s physical activity and health. The built environment is acknowledged as an important factor in understanding children’s ATS, alongside parental factors and seasonality. Inconsistencies in methodological approaches exist, and a clear understanding of factors related to ATS remains equivocal. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of associates of children’s ATS, by considering the effects of daily weather patterns and neighbourhood walk ability and neighbourhood preferences (i.e., for living in a high or low walkable neighbourhood) on this behaviour.MethodsData were drawn from the Understanding Relationships between Activity and Neighbourhoods study, a cross-sectional study of physical activity and the built environment in adults and children in four New Zealand cities. Parents of participating children completed an interview and daily trip diary that assessed their child’s mode of travel to school, household and individual demographic information, and parental neighbourhood preference. Daily weather data were downloaded from New Zealand’s national climate database. Geographic information systems-derived variables were calculated for distance to school and neighbourhood walkability. Bivariate analyses were conducted with ATS and potential associates; factors related to ATS at p < 0.20 were considered simultaneously in generalized estimation equation models, and backwards elimination of non-significant factors was conducted; city was treated as a fixed effect in all models.ResultsA total of 217 children aged 6.5-15 years participated in this study. Female sex, age, city, household income, limited/no car access, residing in zone of school, shorter distance to school, neighbourhood self selection, rainfall, and sunlight hours were simultaneously considered in multivariate generalised estimation equation modelling (all p < 0.20 in bivariate analyses). After elimination of non-significant factors, age (p = 0.005), shorter distance to school (p < 0.001), city (p = 0.03), and neighbourhood self selection (p = 0.04) remained significantly associated with ATS in the multivariate analysis.ConclusionDistance to school is the prevailing environmental influencing factor on children’s ATS. This study, in conjunction with previous research, suggests that school siting is likely an important associate of children’s ATS.

Children's school commuting in the Netherlands: Does it matter how urban form is incorporated in mode choice models?

“…Model 2 showed that a limited number of variables are associated with children's mode choice, confirming the results of Oliver et al (2014). Concerning children's individual characteristics, a persistent finding across the models was that age is positively related to walking and cycling, with a distinct effect for the former.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, it is the first comparative study of these three urban form utilizations and how they affect model interpretation. While several Anglophone studies have been published (e.g., Kerr et al, 2006;McMillan, 2007;Noland, Park, Von Hagen, & Chatman, 2014;Oliver et al, 2014;Mitra, Papaioannou, & Habib, 2016;Woldeamanuel, 2016), European studies (e.g., M€ uller et al, 2008;Broberg & Sarjala, 2015;Kaplan et al, 2016) are underrepresented (Lu et al, 2014). We focused on the Netherlands, a country that is highly attuned to walking and cycling (Pucher & Buehler, 2008).…”

Natural and built environmental exposures on children's active school travel: A Dutch global positioning system-based cross-sectional study

“…As highlighted by Oliver et al (2014), the joint consideration of multiple built environmental variables provokes multicollinearity problems in regressions (Lu Table 1 Descriptive statistics stratified by active and passive modes on a trip level.…”

Results From New Zealand’s 2016 Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth

“…Data for 8 regional studies totaling 6329 participants from Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin cities supplemented the calculation of this score. 15,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23] With the exception of 1 study, all assessed multiple measures of screen time. Across these studies, an average of 49% of children and youth met the recommendation of watching less than 2 hours of screen time daily, with a range of 17% to 96%.…”

“…Data were derived from 8 studies, 15,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23] in total comprising 3363 sociodemographically diverse children and youth from Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin cities. On average, 54% of children in these studies participated in at least 60 minutes of MVPA per day.…”