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Features of the UK childcare environment and associations with preschooler's in-care physical activity

Hesketh, KR; van Sluijs, EM; (2016) Features of the UK childcare environment and associations with preschooler's in-care physical activity. Preventive Medicine Reports , 3 pp. 53-57. 10.1016/j.pmedr.2015.12.004. Green open access

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Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Features of the childcare environment may influence children's in-care physical activity (PA). We assessed the association between UK preschool care-provider, environmental and policy factors and 3-4-year-olds' average daily in-care sedentary behaviour (SED) and PA. METHODS: In 2013, we used accelerometers to measure the in-care SED/ PA of 201 3-4-year-old children (51% female) in 30 preschools in Cambridgeshire, UK, (average wear time: (mean ± SD) 4.2 ± 1.3 week-days). We assessed the childcare environment using the Environment and Policy Assessment and Observation tool; demographic and carer information was taken from questionnaires. We used three-level mixed-effects regression analyses (adjusted for sex, in-care time and travel mode to care) to determine the association between childcare factors and children's in-care average daily minutes/hour spent SED, in light PA (LPA) and in moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA). RESULTS: Children spent 5.6 ± 2.5 h in care per day on average; clustering of PA within preschools was limited (ICCs: 0.003-0.05). Fully adjusted models showed that active opportunities were positively associated with children's in-care SED. No associations with in-care LPA and MVPA were observed. CONCLUSION: Few care-provider, environmental and policy factors were associated with children's in-care activity. UK childcare policies advocating child-driven play, moving freely indoors and outdoors, may be more conducive to individual children's PA.

Type: Article
Title: Features of the UK childcare environment and associations with preschooler's in-care physical activity
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2015.12.004
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2015.12.004
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: Childcare, EPAO, Environment Policy Assessment and Observation, Environment, ICC, Intra-class correlation co-efficient, IMD, Index of Multiple Deprivation, LPA, Light physical activity, MVPA, Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, Ofsted, Office for Standards in Education, PA, Physical activity, Physical activity, Policy, Preschool-aged children, SED, Sedentary, SPACE, Studying Physical Activity in preschool-aged Children and their Environment Study, Sedentary
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Population, Policy and Practice Dept
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1477489
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