We conducted a systematic review to evaluate combinations of physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep duration and their associations with physical, psychological and educational outcomes in children and adolescents. MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsychINFO, SPORTDiscus, PubMed, EMBASE, and ERIC were searched in June 2020. Included studies needed to 1) quantitatively analyze the association of two or more movement behaviors with an outcome, 2) analyze a population between 5-17 years old, and 3) include at least an English abstract. We included 141 studies. Most studies included the combination of physical activity and sedentary behavior in their analyzes. Sleep was studied less frequently. In combination, high physical activity and low sedentary behavior were associated with the best physical health, psychological health, and education-related outcomes. Sleep was often in the combination that was associated with the most favorable outcomes. Sedentary behavior had a stronger influence in adolescents than children and tended to be associated more negatively with outcomes when it was defined as screen time than overall time spent being sedentary. More initiatives and guidelines combining all three movement behaviors will benefit adiposity, cardiometabolic risk factors, cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular physical fitness, well-being, health-related quality of life, mental health, academic performance, and cognitive/executive function.

Introduction: Physical activity can improve academic performance; however, much less is known about the specific association between sport participation and academic performance, and this evidence has not been synthesized. Our aim was to systematically review and combine via meta-analyses evidence of the association between sport participation and academic performance in children and adolescents. Methods: We conducted searches of five electronic databases using sport and academic performance related terms. We combined evidence from eligible studies using a structural equation modeling approach to multilevel meta-analysis. Results: From 115 eligible studies, most of which had a high risk of bias (k = 87), we meta-analyzed 298 effect sizes. Overall, sport participation had a small positive effect on academic performance (d = 0.26, 95% confidence interval = 0.09, 0.42). Moderator analyses indicated that sports participation was most beneficial for academic performance when it was at a moderate dose (i.e., 1-2 h•wk −1 ), compared with no sport or a high dose of sport (3+ h•wk −1 ). Conclusions: Sports participation during school hours was more beneficial for academic performance compared with sport participation outside school hours. Based on mostly low-quality studies, we found some evidence that sport could positively affect academic performance in children and adolescents. It appears that sport participation of a moderate dose and at school could be used to promote academic performance. However, if this field were to inform policy, high-quality studies are needed that provide insight into the effect of dose and sport characteristics on academic performance.

Background Combinations of movement behaviors (i.e., physical activity, sedentary behavior, sleep) are associated with health and developmental outcomes in youth. Youth vary in how they accumulate these behaviors, both in volume and specific domains (e.g., sedentary time spent on recreational screen activities vs homework). The aim of this study was to examine how youth’s combined general and domain-specific movement trajectories differ by socioeconomic position. Methods We conducted a longitudinal, group-based multi-trajectory analysis to identify general and domain-specific movement trajectory profiles for 2457 youth from age 10 to 14 years from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children from 2014–2018. We used multinomial logistic regression to test if socioeconomic position predicted profile membership. Results We identified three general movement trajectory profiles for both sexes, four domain-specific profiles for males, and five for females. For general movement trajectories, females from lower socioeconomic positions were more likely to be a combination of less active and more sedentary than females from higher socioeconomic positions. Males across socioeconomic positions spend similar amounts of time in physical activity, sedentary time, and sleep. For domain-specific movement trajectories, youth from lower socioeconomic positions were likely to spend a combination of less time in education-based sedentary behavior and more time in recreational screen activities than their higher socioeconomic position peers. Conclusion Our results indicate that socioeconomic position predicted in which domains youth accumulate their movements. Future observational research and interventions targeting different socioeconomic groups should therefore consider domain-specific movement trajectories.