Girls' perception of physical environmental factors and transportation: reliability and association with physical activity and active transport to school

Abstract

Background: Preliminary evidence suggests that the physical environment and transportation are associated with youth physical activity levels. Only a few studies have examined the association of physical environmental factors on walking and bicycling to school. Therefore, the purpose of this study was (1) to examine the test-retest reliability of a survey designed for youth to assess perceptions of physical environmental factors (e.g. safety, aesthetics, facilities near the home) and transportation, and (2) to describe the associations of these perceptions with both physical activity and active transport to school.

Perceptions of neighborhood environments and childhood obesity: Evidence of harmful gender inequities among Portuguese children

“…Adolescent girls seem to be more sensitive to some features of the built environment, while adolescent boys showed a particular sensitivity to the social environment, chiefly peer influences (Hume et al 2005;Evenson et al, 2006;Santos et al, 2009;Rodríguez et al, 2012).…”

“…As far as we are aware, few studies similar to this have been published. Other studies on this topic were concerned with older children (Hume et al 2005;Evenson et al, 2006;Santos et al, 2009;Singh et al, 2010;Rodríguez et al, 2012) or, if concerned with younger children, no gender distinctions were found (Timperio et al, 2004(Timperio et al, , 2005Burdette et al, 2003;Carver et al, 2010). Only some studies considering adolescents have pointed to a sex-specific influence of neighborhood features on physical activity behaviors.…”

“…Furthermore, when analyzing how environmental factors cause impact on the different genders, previous studies have highlighted the emergence of a sexspecific pattern of environmental influences. Nevertheless, this specificity was reported only for adolescents and adults and was not explicitly reported for children (Hume et al 2005;Evenson et al, 2006;Santos et al, 2008;Santos et al, 2009;Singh et al, 2010). According to William et al (2012), the associations between the built and social environment and obesity have been extensively researched in adults.…”

Perceptions of the Neighborhood Environment and Children’s Afterschool Moderate-to-Vigorous Physical Activity

“…The response format for all the questions was a 5-point Likert scale, with possible responses ranging from ‘disagree a lot’ to ‘agree a lot.’ The neighborhood environment survey items were taken from two validated surveys, the Amherst Health and Activity Study parent survey and the Trial of Activity in Adolescent Girls (TAAG) student survey. (17, 38) Reliability was assessed for this study sample (Cronbach’s α=0.73).…”

Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale for Youth (NEWS-Y): Reliability and relationship with physical activity

“…For example, recreational physical activity of youth has been associated with characteristics of physical activity facilities in the neighborhood (Heitzler et al, 2006;Ellaway et al, 2007;Cohen et al, 2006;Roemmich et al, 2006). Walking and cycling for transportation by youth have been associated with community design and transportation attributes such as distance to destinations, sidewalks, and traffic safety (Yeung et al, 2008, Evenson et al, 2006Kerr et al, 2006;Nelson et al, 2008;Boarnet et al, 2005). Total youth physical activity has been related to both recreation and community environments (Kligerman et al, 2007;Norman et al, 2006).…”