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Abstract
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Background
Few studies with children in Asian countries, especially in Japan, have examined the relationship between walking to/from school and physical activity by segments of the day. Therefore, the present study examined the associations between walking to/from school with physical activity before school, after school, and during the entire day in a sample with a high proportion of Japanese children who walk to/from school.
Methods
A total of 119 participants (10.4 ± 1.3 years old) were investigated regarding their mode and length of school commute and physical activity. Step counts, sedentary time (ST), light physical activity (LPA), and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) were measured using an ActiGraph GT9X Link accelerometer. The associations between time walking to/from school and physical activity were analyzed using the Spearman correlation coefficient. A receiver-operating characteristic analysis was used to identify the threshold of the time spent walking to/from school that is necessary to meet the physical activity guideline (MVPA ≥ 60 min/day).
Results
The results showed that 90.8% and 89.9% of students walked to/from school, respectively. The segments of before school, after school, before and after school, and during the entire day demonstrated significant low to high (r = 0.20-0.86) correlations between the time spent walking to/from school and step counts, ST, LPA, and MVPA. Our study showed that spending ≥45 min walking to/from school is important for meeting the physical activity recommendations.
Conclusions
This study provides important evidence for the promotion of walking to/from school in the future. In addition, our results also suggested that children with relatively short commuting time to school need to be more physically active in daily life situations.
Language: en |