Children who spend more time outside are more physically activeTime spent outside is one potential factor that may influence children's physical activity. Given concern about a decline in children’s physical activity at a time when there are increases in childhood overweight and obesity, there is growing international interest in factors affecting those activities. Increasing time outdoors may be an effective intervention to increase children’s physical activity. While previous studies have examined the relationship between time spent outside and children's physical activity, they have tended to use self-report, parent report, or direct observation without use of objective measures of physical activity. The purpose of this study was to objectively measure physical activity while using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to provide an accurate measure of children’s physical location.
In this study, Cooper and colleagues used GPS receivers to record the outdoor location of over 1,000 11-year-old children in 23 urban schools in Southwest England in the UK and matched this information with data from accelerometers that measured children's physical activity. Children wore the GPS units and accelerometers after school for four consecutive days.
In analyzing the data, Cooper and colleagues found that children spent, on average, about 42 minutes outside after school each day. Researchers also found that children spent more time outdoors in the summer than in the winter months and that there were no significant differences between boys and girls with regard to time spent outside. In terms of physical activity, Cooper and colleagues found that physical activity was two to three times higher outside than inside, physical activity outdoors was higher in the summer than in the winter months, and that there was no seasonal variation in physical activity that took place indoors. In examining the relationship between time spent outside and physical activity, researchers found that the more time children spent outside, the more physically active they were.
This study provides further evidence of the important linkage between children's time spent outside and increased physical activity levels. This study also demonstrates the potential of combining GPS and accelerometer data to advance our understanding of this relationship. The authors suggest that public health interventions to increase the time that children spend outdoors could be a viable way to increase children’s physical activity, and that GPS can be a useful tool in understanding differences in outdoor and indoor behaviors.
The Bottom Line