Patterns and Correlates of Sedentary Behavior in Children Attending Family Child Care

Li Kheng Chai, Kelly Rice-McNeil and Stewart G. Trost
Additional contact information
Li Kheng Chai: Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI) at Queensland Centre for Children’s Health Research, Queensland University of Technology, South Brisbane, QLD 4101, Australia
Kelly Rice-McNeil: Department of Health and Human Performance, Eastern Oregon University, La Grande, OR 97850, USA
Stewart G. Trost: Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI) at Queensland Centre for Children’s Health Research, Queensland University of Technology, South Brisbane, QLD 4101, Australia

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 2, 1-10

Abstract: Public health authorities recommend young children should not be sedentary for more than one hour at a time. This study assessed the frequency and duration of sedentary bouts in children attending family child care homes (FCCHs); and examined associations with FCCH provider practices related to sedentary behaviors. Overall, 127 children (aged 3.5 ± 1.1 years) from 41 FCCHs participated in the study. Sedentary bouts were measured using an accelerometer worn for the duration of FCCHs attendance over a randomly selected week. Provider practices were assessed using the Nutrition and Physical Activity Self-Assessment for Child Care self-assessment instrument. Children attending FCCHs mostly accumulated short sedentary bouts (<5 min) with very few lasting more than 10 min. Boys exhibited significantly fewer sedentary bouts, and significantly less sedentary time in bouts than girls. Children attending FCCHs that met or exceeded childcare standards for outdoor active play, had portable play equipment, offered a variety of fixed play equipment, and/or adequate indoor play space exhibited significantly fewer sedentary bouts and significantly less sedentary time accumulated in short and medium length bouts. Programs encouraging FCCHs to adopt physical activity promoting practices could potentially reduce child sedentary time while in care.

Keywords: early childhood education and care; sedentary behavior; family child care home; screen time (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/2/549/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/2/549/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:2:p:549-:d:308912

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().