Parental perception and guideline awareness of children’s lifestyle behaviours at ages 5 to 14 in Singapore

Abstract

Introduction: There are limited data on the descriptive lifestyle behaviour of school-age children in Singapore. Methods: A total of 100 parents of children ages 5 to 14 participated in a parents’ proxy-reported survey. Frequency of moderate physical activity (PA) and vigorous PA was assessed, while t-tests or chi-square test was used to examine differences between weekdays and weekends for sleep, screen viewing time (SVT) and sedentary behaviour (SB). Results: Of the 100 children (68% of Chinese ethnicity, 59% boys, mean age 9.1±2.9 years), 31% were overweight or obese, with body mass index z-score of >1. For moderate and vigorous PA participation in a typical week, 32.0% and 43.0%, respectively, did not participate, while median (interquartile range) days of participation were 3 (2–3) days/week and 2 (1–3) days/week for a duration of 60 (interquartile range 30–120) minutes/session. When comparing weekends with weekdays, the means (standard deviation) of both SVT and sleep duration were higher on weekends (SVT: 4.1 [2.9] versus 3.3 [3.1] hours/day, P=0.07; sleep: 8.8 [1.5] vs 8.3 [1.3] hours/day, P=0.02), while there were no significant differences for SB. A higher proportion of children had SB of ≥10 hours/day and slept <8 hours/day on weekdays compared with on weekends (SB: 23.5% vs 20.6%, P>0.05; sleep:18.8% vs 2.1%, P<0.05), while the proportion exceeding SVT of 2 hours/day were higher on weekends than on weekdays (63.8% vs 45.4%, P=0.03). Overall, there was higher parental awareness of sleep guidelines (80.0%), but lower awareness of PA (51.0%) and SVT (59.0%) guidelines. Conclusion: Lifestyle behaviours were suboptimal in Singapore children compared with existing overseas guidelines, indicating a need for an integrated guideline with greater dissemination. Keywords: Childhood and adolescents, integrated guideline, lifestyle behaviours, physical activity, screen viewing time, sleep

Adherence to 24-hour integrated activity guidelines among infants, toddlers and preschool children in Singapore

“…Parental perception of their child’s weight, calorie intake, PA, SVT exposure and sleep were assessed with the questions previously published [ 25 ] “Do you think your child is …”, with the response options of “Overweight”, “Normal weight”, “Underweight” and “Not sure”. The other 3 questions were (1) “Do you feel that your child receives an adequate amount of physical activity to benefit his/her growth, development and health?”; (2) “Are you concerned about the amount of recreational screen time your child is currently exposed to?”; and (3) “Do you think your child is getting adequate sleep to support his/her growth, development and health?”, with response options of “Yes”, “No” and “Not sure”.…”

“…Parental perception of their child's weight, calorie intake, PA, SVT exposure and sleep were assessed with the questions previously published [25] "Do you think your child is . .…”

Adherence to 24-hr Activity Guidelines and Quality of Life in Singapore Children: A Self-Reported Survey Study

“…Almost one-third (32%) and 43% of children in the cited study did not participate in any moderate and vigorous physical activity in a typical week, respectively. More children had lesser than the recommended duration of night-time sleep (8 hr/day) on weekday (18.8%) than on weekend (2.1%) (Quah et al, 2021) The other local study that collected time use data of the same lifestyle behaviours is by Chia and colleagues albeit for younger children aged 5 years and below (Chia et al, 2020). The findings from Quah and colleagues' study suggested that lifestyle behaviours were sub-optimal in a sizeable proportion of children in Singapore which then spurred the development of The Singapore Integrated 24-hour Activity Guidelines for Children and Adolescents (Loo et al, 2022).…”

24 h Activity Guidelines in Children and Adolescents: A Prevalence Survey in Asia-Pacific Cities

“…The questionnaire comprised three segments: (a) demographic characteristics of parent and child; (b) children's PA using 9 questions adapted from the short form International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ-SF) [22] which records the activity of four intensity levels: (1) vigorous-intensity activity such as aerobics, (2) moderate-intensity activity such as leisure cycling, (3) walking, and (4) sitting; (c) children's sleep habits (night-time sleep and day-time napping) adapted from the Child Sleep Habits Questionnaire [23]; (d) children's recreational screen viewing time (SVT) was captured as the average time a child spends on a screen [24] (e) Parental perception of child' health and awareness of lifestyle guidelines for children. Details of the questionnaire items have been reported previously [25]. The questionnaire was developed to assess caregiver-reported child's PA in a week, sleep habits, SB, and SVT on a weekday and on the weekend where the caregivers were asked to recall their child's habitual movement behaviours in a typical 7-day week.…”

“…The questions used to assess parental perception of children's health and awareness of activity guidelines for children and adolescents were previously published [25].…”