Adiposity, fitness, health-related quality of life and the reallocation of time between children's school day activity behaviours: A compositional data analysis

Abstract

Sedentary time (ST), light (LPA), and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) constitute the range of school day activity behaviours. This study investigated whether the composition of school activity behaviours was associated with health indicators, and the predicted changes in health when time was reallocated between activity behaviours. Accelerometers were worn for 7-days between October and December 2010 by 318 UK children aged 10–11, to provide estimates of school day ST, LPA, and MVPA. BMI z-scores and percent waist-to-height ratio were calculated as indicators of adiposity. Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) was assessed using the 20-m shuttle run test. The PedsQL™ questionnaire was completed to assess psychosocial and physical health-related quality of life (HRQL). Log-ratio multiple linear regression models predicted health indicators for the mean school day activity composition, and for new compositions where fixed durations of time were reallocated from one activity behaviour to another, while the remaining behaviours were unchanged. The school day activity composition significantly predicted adiposity and CRF (p = 0.04–0.002), but not HRQL. Replacing MVPA with ST or LPA around the mean activity composition predicted higher adiposity and lower CRF. When ST or LPA were substituted with MVPA, the relationships with adiposity and CRF were asymmetrical with favourable, but smaller predicted changes in adiposity and CRF than when MVPA was replaced. Predicted changes in HRQL were negligible. The school day activity composition significantly predicted adiposity and CRF but not HRQL. Reallocating time from ST and LPA to MVPA is advocated through comprehensive school physical activity promotion approaches.Trial registrationISRCTN03863885.

School-Based Sedentary Behavior, Physical Activity, and Health-Related Outcomes among Hispanic Children in the United States: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Specifically, sedentary behavior was found to be negatively associated with cardiorespiratory fitness but positively related to body weight, regardless of the intensity levels of physical activity. This finding is consistent with a recent study made on United Kingdom children of ages 10-11, which suggested that school day activities, including MVPA and sedentary behavior, significantly predicted adiposity and cardiorespiratory fitness, but not HRQOL [16]. Our results further found that MVPA, not LPA or sedentary behavior, was a significant correlate of HRQOL among Hispanic children, supporting existing evidence that achieving the recommended 60-min MVPA per day is more likely associated with better HRQOL among children [9,20].…”

“…According to a recent systematic research review [15], very few studies have focused on the combined effects of sedentary behavior and physical activity on health outcomes (i.e., cardiorespiratory fitness, weight status) among children, and the overall quality of the available evidence was low. Recent evidence also suggests that individuals with high physical activity (especially MVPA) tend to have lower levels of adiposity when compared to those with low physical activity, regardless of their levels of sedentary behavior [16]. In addition, based on the recent FITNESSGRAM ® surveillance data [17], around 50-60% (60% of boys and 50% of girls) of fourth and fifth grade children in the US achieved the health fitness zone (HFZ), but this rate declined from middle school to high school [18].…”

Sedentary behavior patterns and adiposity in children: a study based on compositional data analysis

“…A strength of this study was that we used the CoDA approach, which adequately deals with the compositional properties of time-use data. Although in recent years several studies used the CoDA approach to assess the associations between device-measured SB and obesity markers [19,[40][41][42][43][44], to our knowledge there has been no CoDA-based study analyzing the effect of sedentary patterns on adiposity in children.…”

Using Compositional Data Analysis to Explore Associations Between Accumulation of Sedentary Behaviour and Physical Activity and Biomarkers of Cardiometabolic Health in Children and Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…This compositional data analysis approach is advanced in that it allows the simultaneous consideration of components that sum to a whole, without statistical problems such as collinearity, commonly encountered in some traditional approaches [7,8]. To date, the application of compositional data analysis to studying time use and health has mostly been applied to adults [7,9] rather than in youth [10]. Further, to our knowledge, there have been no studies, in either adults or youth, considering activity intensity and bout duration components across the activity spectrum simultaneously.…”