Frequency and duration of physical activity bouts in school-aged children: A comparison within and between days
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Brooke, Hannah L; Atkin, Andrew J; Corder, Kirsten; Brage, Soren; van Sluijs, Esther MF
- Source
- Preventive Medicine Reports, Vol 4, Iss, Pp 585-590 (2016)
- Subject
- Intervention design
Physical activity
musculoskeletal, neural, and ocular physiology
lcsh:R
education
lcsh:Medicine
musculoskeletal system
Adolescents
Accelerometry
Bouts
Patterns
human activities
Time-segments
Children
- Language
- ISSN
- 2211-3355
Understanding how physical activity (PA) patterns vary within and between days may guide PA promotion in young people. We aimed to 1) describe and compare the frequency (bouts/day) and duration (min/bout) of bouts of moderate-to-vigorous intensity PA (MVPA) on weekdays vs. weekends and in-school vs. out-of-school, and 2) assess associations of bout frequency and duration in these time-segments with overall PA. We used cross-sectional accelerometer data from 2737 children (aged 6–19 years) in the United States National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003–2006. A bout was defined as MVPA (≥2000 counts per minute [cpm]) lasting ≥3 min. Adjusted Wald tests were used to assess differences in bout characteristics between time-segments. Linear regression was used to examine the association of time-segment specific bout characteristics with daily minutes of MVPA and PA volume (average cpm). Bout frequency was higher on weekdays than weekends (median [IQR] 4.3 [2.2–7.2] vs. 3.0 [1.0–6.5] bouts/day, p