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This data article describes data from an Our Voice citizen science data collection aiming at identifying elements that facilitate or hinder physical activity among adolescents in a medium sized city in Sweden. Twenty-four adolescents from two neighborhoods with low socioeconomic status in Sweden used the Stanford Healthy Neighborhood Discovery Tool app on their phones to take photographs and record audio narratives of aspects of their neighborhood that they perceived as facilitating or hindering their physically activity. In total, 186 photos of the neighborhood elements were taken by the adolescents and thereafter the research group categorized the photos into a final set of 16 elements of which 12 described the built environment and 4 the social environment. The data collection included the combination of the following data collected using the app: photographs, geocoded data of where the photographs were taken, recorded narratives describing the photographs, positive and negative neighborhood attributes (portrayed as a happy or sad “smiley face”), and an 8-item survey. In addition, we used official statistics from the City of Västerås describing the two neighborhoods as well as the whole city. This data article is associated with the article titled “Using citizen science to understand the prerequisites for physical activity among adolescents in low socioeconomic status neighborhoods - the NESLA study” [1] .

(1) Background: The World Health Organization recommends active commuting as a source of physical activity. Active commuting is determined by various factors, including the socioeconomic status (SES) of families and neighborhoods, distance to schools, perceived neighborhood safety, lifestyles and availability of walkways and biking paths. This study aimed to assess factors associated with modes of transportation to and from school among adolescents aged 16–19 living in a middle-sized city in Sweden. (2) Method: Three hundred and fourteen students, of whom 55% were females, from schools in the city of Västerås participated in the study. Printed as well as web-based self-administered questionnaires were used to collect the data. (3) Results: Adolescents living in high SES neighborhoods were 80% more likely to bike or walk to school (OR = 1.80; CI: 1.01, 3.20) than adolescents living in low SES neighborhoods. Furthermore, active commuting was associated with higher consumption of fruits and vegetables (OR = 1.77; CI: 1.05, 2.97) and less consumption of junk foods (OR = 0.43; CI: 0.26, 0.71), as compared to passive commuting. (4) Conclusions: Active commuting is a cost-effective and sustainable source of regular physical activity and should be encouraged at a societal level.

Aims: This study aims to investigate trends in four types of adolescent mental health problems; that is, psychosomatic symptoms, depressive symptoms, suicidal ideations, and suicide attempts 2004–2020. A second aim is to investigate the moderating roles of socioeconomic status and sex in these trends. Methods: The analysis is based on repeated cross-sectional data 2004–2020 among grade 9 students in secondary schools in a Swedish county. In total, data from 19,873 students were included in the analysis. We fitted linear and logistic regression equations and used survey-years’ coefficients to estimate the trends. We also estimated the moderating effects of socioeconomic status and sex using interactions between survey year and socioeconomic status and sex, respectively. Results: The trends in all mental health problems declined over time. Through its interaction with survey year, socioeconomic status moderated the trends; psychosomatic symptoms (B = −0.115, P<0.001), depressive symptoms (B = −0.084, P<0.001) and suicidal ideations (odds ratio 0.953, confidence interval 0.924–0.983) significantly declined over time among those with high socioeconomic status. However, socioeconomic status did not have an association with the trend in suicide attempts. Interaction between sex and year of survey was associated with significant decreasing trends in depressive symptoms and suicidal ideations only among girls. Conclusions: Adolescent mental health problems have decreased over time, but only for adolescents with high socioeconomic status, or only in depressive symptoms and suicidal ideations for girls. The results shed light on the growing inequalities in health outcomes across levels of socioeconomic status.