Influence of structural and psychosocial factors on the level of physical activity of preschoolers attending daycare

Camille Gagné -Université Laval -SRG 2007

Français

2009

Introduction. Data shows that children aged three to five who attend daycare are not sufficiently active. This can affect their health and their potential to develop the skills necessary
to participate in a sport. The interventions available to increase the children’s level of physical activity have little or no effectiveness. Therefore, the factors determining the physical activity
of children in daycare must be identified in order to develop more effective interventions aimed at increasing their level of physical activity.

Theoretical framework. The theory of planned behaviour and Cohen’s model (2002) are
the main theoretical foundations in identifying the psychosocial variables associated with
the daycare workers and their educational practices and the factors related to the child care centre that could affect the young children’s activity levels.

Progress. This study consisted of a qualitative and a quantitative phase. The qualitative study has been completed and made it possible to determine the content of items used to measure certain psychosocial variables. The quantitative study is currently underway. The preliminary results obtained with a sample of 64 children and 15 daycare workers (from seven child care centres in the Quebec City area) are now available.

Methods. Children’s physical activity is measured with a GT1M ActiGraph accelerometer, which had to be worn on four days. This device captured the children’s vertical movements every 15 seconds, from the time they arrived at the child care centre until they left. The accelerometer data was reduced according to the method suggested by Alhassan et al. (2008). The readings were re-grouped into one single day (composite day), which registered the average of the movements captured every 15 seconds between 9:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on days when the child was in daycare. All children have at least one day when they stayed in daycare from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The raw data from the accelerometer (known as “count”) was translated into categories of physical activity intensity according to the criteria proposed
by Sirard et al. (2005).

Results. Preliminary findings indicate that between 9:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., children spend most of their time (89.30%) engaged in sedentary activities. On average, they spend 42 minutes in low-, moderate- or high-intensity physical activities. The data so far obtained from the daycare workers (n=15) indicates they are highly motivated to encourage the children to move for at least two hours per day. About 40% of these caregivers are not in the habit of getting the children to be active and some of the obstacles they perceive to doing so are not fully under their control (for example, lack of time and a heavy schedule). The environmental factors have not
been analyzed.

Conclusion. Preliminary results suggest that children move relatively little in daycare,
and in these circumstances, it could be difficult to achieve the two hours per day of physical activity recommended by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education.
This situation also results in few opportunities to develop the skills that underlie participation in sport. Therefore, conducting interventions in child care centres for increasing the physical activity level of preschoolers could prove to be useful.

2008

Introduction. Data shows that children aged three to five who attend daycare are not sufficiently active. The effectiveness of the interventions available for increasing the amount of physical activity of these children can be called into question. To develop more effective interventions, the factors determining how daycare workers encourage children to be active must be identified.

Theoretical framework. The theory of planned behaviour is the main theoretical foundation. It assumes a qualitative study conducted to identify the questions that will be used in the main study.

Progress. The qualitative study has been completed. The main study should begin in the next few weeks.

Method. For the qualitative study, a sample of 30 teachers from the Quebec City and Chaudière -Appalaches areas answered a questionnaire consisting of six open-ended questions. Two evaluators analyzed the answers independently.

Results. Daycare workers essentially see benefits to getting children to move. They believe that parents and other workers are the key actors in encouraging children to engage in physical activity. However, a number of obstacles (outside temperature, access to a large room, etc.), over which workers have little control, were identified.

Conclusion. Preliminary results indicate that to increase the time children spend being physically active, it would be useful to develop interventions involving both daycare workers and individuals who have the power and means to change certain aspects of the daycare environment and to ensure knowledge transfer among daycare workers.

2007

The data shows that children between the ages of three and five spend most of their time on
sedentary activities (Finn, Johannsen and Specker, 2002; Reilly et al., 2004; Sallo and Silla,
1997), which has an impact on both their self esteem and self efficacy (Ritchie et al. 2003,
American College of Sports Medicine 2000), as well as on the issue of overweight and obese
children (Ebbeling, Pawlak & Ludwig 2002, Steinbeck 2001). Given that most children between
the ages of two and four spend most of their time in child care (Desrosiers & Bédard 2005), it is important to recommend child care agencies that encourage physical activity for young children throughout the day (VanVrancken-Tompkins & Sothern 2006). So far, programs aimed at modifying the physical activity behaviour of very young children attending child care have had little or no effect. This can be explained by the fact that the programs did not first identify the determinants of behaviour to be changed, which is necessary in developing effective
interventions (Kok et al. 1997, Kim et al. 1997), and/or because they focused exclusively on the children and parents without considering the environment in which the children are developing. There are also problems with the methodology used in these studies. It is crucial to check whether child care agencies’ structural (environmental, organizational and social) factors and the individual factors of the caregivers who work there influence the physical activities of young children. This information will lead to interventions that are likely to increase activity levels in preschoolers attending child care.

SCRI 2007 Presentation Slides

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