Original research
The type and prevalence of activities performed by Australian children during the lunchtime and after school periods

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Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this study was to identify the most prevalent reported activities performed by Australian children during the lunchtime and after school periods; and estimate the mean duration of a typical bout of the most prevalent activities performed during the lunchtime and after school periods. Design: This study was a secondary data analysis of the 2007 Australian National Children's Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey. Method: Use of time data were collected from Australian children aged 10.0–13.9 years (n = 794) using the Multimedia Activity Recall for Children and Adults (MARCA). The most prevalent self-reported activities for the lunchtime and after school period on school days were determined by mean duration across the sample. The estimated energy cost for each of the activities was reported based on the Compendium of Energy Expenditures for Youth. Results: A list of the 20 most prevalent lunchtime activities and 30 most prevalent after school activities is presented. Of the most prevalent lunchtime activities, 35% were classified as sedentary and 65% as moderate to vigorous physical activities. During the after school period, 57% of the most prevalent activities were classified as sedentary and only 43% as moderate to vigorous physical activities. Conclusions: These data may assist in the development or refinement of activity checklists with greater content validity, which may be used in combination with objective measures to provide important contextual information about the types of activities being performed and inform the development of appropriately targeted interventions.

Introduction

Understanding children's physical activity behaviour and assessing the relationship between health and physical activity are important for health promotion. While use of objective measures, such as accelerometers, is widespread in assessing and quantifying physical activity, a limitation of using objective measures of physical activity is the inability to identify the types of activities performed.1 Identifying activity type is necessary to provide contextual meaning to objective physical activity output data. In addition, it has been found that specific types of activity have been associated with important health outcomes.2, 3, 4 For example, high levels of overall screen time have been found to be strongly related to poorer health status.4 Therefore, having an understanding of the types of activities children typically perform during unique periods of physical activity opportunity will assist in determining whether or not children are engaging in specific types of health enhancing activities. This can direct the appropriate design of interventions to increase physical activity and decrease sedentary time.

Self-report time diaries and checklists are often used to provide descriptive detail of types of activities performed.5 These lists can only be effective if they display content validity, that is the activity checklist reflects the types of activities most commonly performed by children.1, 6 In many cases, it is unclear how the activities in existing checklists are identified. Studies tend to comment on identifying and using “common” activities in checklists but lack detailed information and/or a strong evidence-base about how they define “common”. The development of existing physical activity checklists vary considerably in methodology. Some checklists are based on consensus from expert groups,7 while others are developed through focus groups8 or assumptions of common activities by the authors.9 In addition, a number of checklists are purposively defined depending on the intention of the study (e.g. some lists only contain sports or leisure activities).8 Content validity is continuously evolving with the emergence of new activities for children.6 Activity checklists need to reflect specific activities that are typically performed by the specific population in the physical activity context under investigation.1, 6, 10 This will ensure that we are obtaining a clear understanding of physical activity patterns during the specific physical activity context, thus potentially increasing the reliability and validity of the findings.

The aims of this study were two-fold: (1) to identify the most prevalent reported activities performed by Australian children during the lunchtime and after school period; and (2) to estimate the mean duration of a typical bout of the most prevalent activities performed during the lunchtime and after school periods, using data from the 2007 Australian National Children's Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey.

Section snippets

Methods

The Australian National Children's Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey involved interviewing 4487 children and their parents aged 2–16 years, of whom 2200 were aged 9–16 years and completed the Multimedia Activity Recall for Children and Adults (MARCA) between March and August 2007.11 The survey design has been described in detail elsewhere.11 Briefly, clusters of postal code areas were randomly selected from around Australia, with the exception of very remote areas. Random-digit dialling

Results

Table 2, Table 3 present the most prevalent lunchtime and after school activities self-reported by 10.0–13.9 year olds in the Australian 2007 National Children's Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey. Summing the mean duration of the 20 most prevalent lunchtime activities covers 38 min of the 45 min lunchtime period assessed (84%). Using the Compendium of Energy Expenditures for Youth,12 of these activities, 35% were classified as sedentary, accounting for 18 min of the lunchtime period, and 65%

Discussion

This study presents a list of the 20 most prevalent lunchtime activities and the 30 most prevalent after school activities self-reported by Australian children in the 2007 Australian National Children's Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey. These lists were derived from a comprehensive dataset using the MARCA, a tool with comparable validity and reliability to other self-report use-of-time measures.5 These data may assist in the development of activity checklists with greater content validity

Conclusion

With the continual emergence of new activities for children, it is important to understand the types of activities that are typically performed in differing activity contexts. Findings from this study can be used by researchers to develop or refine Australian-specific self-report physical activity questionnaires or activity checklists to improve content validity. These questionnaires and checklists can be used in conjunction with other objective measures to provide important contextual

Practical implications

  • The list of the most prevalent lunchtime and after school activities can be used to develop or refine physical activity checklists.

  • Sedentary activities were more prevalent in the after school period than the lunchtime period where children have greater access to sedentary opportunities. Interventions specific to the after school period should target the restriction of sedentary activities.

  • Moderate to vigorous activities were more prevalent in the lunchtime period compared to the after school

Acknowledgements

The 2007 Australian National Children's Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey was funded by the Australian Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing; the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry; and by the Australian Food and Grocery Council, and SA Health.

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