Combining global positioning system and accelerometer data to determine the locations of physical activity in children

Abstract

Abstract. National trends indicate that children and adolescents are not achieving sufficient levels of physical activity. Combining global positioning system (GPS) technology with accelerometers has the potential to provide an objective determination in locations where youth engage in physical activity. The aim of this study was to identify the optimal methods for collecting combined accelerometer and GPS data in youth, to best locate where children spend time and are physically active. A convenience sample of 24 mid-school children in Massachusetts was included. Accelerometers and GPS units were used to quantify and locate childhood physical activity over 5 weekdays and 2 weekend days. Accelerometer and GPS data were joined by time and mapped with a geographical information system (GIS) using ArcGIS software. Data were collected in winter, spring, summer in 2009-2010, collecting a total of 26,406 matched datapoints overall. Matched data yield was low (19.1% total), regardless of season (winter, 12.8%; spring, 30.1%; summer, 14.3%). Teacher-provided, pre-charged equipment yielded the most matched (30.1%; range: 10.1-52.3%) and greatest average days (6.1 days) of data. Across all seasons, children spent most of their time at home. Outdoor use patterns appeared to vary by season, with street use increasing in spring, and park and playground use increasing in summer. Children spent equal amounts of physical activity time at home and walking in the streets. Overall, the various methods for combining GPS and accelerometer data provided similarly low amounts of combined data. No combined GPS and accelerometer data collection method proved superior in every data return category, but use of GIS to map joined accelerometer and GPS data can demarcate childhood physical activity locations.

Associations between time spent in green areas and physical activity among late middle-aged adults

“…This made it possible to attribute PA levels to each GPS data point, which cannot be done when using only selfreported data, where for example only binary data (participant walked or did not walk today) is extracted (Clark et al, 2014). Third, the combined use with GPS data offers detailed insights in where active behaviour is done (Duncan et al, 2009;Troped et al, 2010;Oreskovic et al, 2012;Kerr et al, 2012). In contrast to previous studies, where only the home neighbourhood is considered, we additionally gathered information on the specific context of where PA is carried out.…”

“…Not only do we focus on where PA mainly takes place as this significantly influences health impacts, but also on the general relationship between the amount of available greenness and the level of PA. To better understand time-activity patterns and PA of late middle-aged adults, it is important to know if and where they are mostly active. Global positioning system (GPS) devices in combination with accelerometers have been previously used to analyse the location-specific PA in children (Elgethun et al, 2003;Almanza et al, 2012;Lachowycz et al, 2012;Oreskovic et al, 2012;Coombes et al, 2013). Knowing where people are can give insights into their exposure to different attributes of the environment (e.g.…”

When cities move children: Development of a new methodology to assess context-specific physical activity behaviour among children and adolescents using accelerometers and GPS

“…As such, further studies are needed to confirm the generalizability of the results; in particular during weekends where lower protocol compliance was achieved. Data was collected during early fall and late spring, where daylight and overall weather conditions were quite similar, and the results are possibly not valid during the winter months as weather and season are known to affect behavior (Oreskovic et al, 2012). It is recommended that the methodology in the future is used in a variety of settings, e.g.…”

“…Recess and Physical Education (PE) are examples of organizational opportunities found to be related to PA during school hours (Guinhouya et al, 2009). Locations such as playgrounds (Quigg et al, 2010;Reed and Hooker, 2012) and urban green space (Lachowycz et al, 2012;Wheeler et al, 2010) or facilities such as sports facilities (Niclasen et al, 2012), school grounds (Dencker et al, 2012), clubs (after school programs in Denmark) (Beets et al, 2009), and shopping centres (Oreskovic et al, 2012) are all potential subdomains for PA during leisure time as they seem to be positively correlated with PA. Within the transport domain active and passive transport are two distinct PA behaviours (Heath et al, 2012).…”

The physical environment and health-enhancing activity during the school commute: global positioning system, geographical information systems and accelerometry

“…The recent availabilty of small and affordable global positioning systems (GPS) and accerelometers has made it possible for researchers to combine these instruments and objectively determine the physical environments where children engage in physical activity (Oreskovic et al, 2012). The present study aimed to identify physical environment factors associated with health-enhancing (defined as moderate-to-vigorous intensity) physical activity during the school commute, using objective within-person repeated measurements.…”