Joint physical-activity/screen-time trajectories during early childhood: socio-demographic predictors and consequences on health-related quality-of-life and socio-emotional outcomes

Abstract

Background Understanding the early roots of physical activity and sedentary behaviors is critical to developing intervention programs that promote healthy lifestyle habits in infants and children. There is, however, no evidence on how these behaviors cluster and develop together during early childhood. The aim of this study was to identify single and joint longitudinal trajectories in physical activity and screen time amongst children aged 0 to 9 years, their social-demographic predictors and their prospective health-related quality-of-life and socio-emotional outcomes. Methods Three waves of data from The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children , a national study tracking two cohorts every 2 years (B-cohort, 0–5 years, n = 4,164; K-cohort, 4–9 years, n = 3,974) were analysed. Growth mixture modelling was applied to longitudinal time-use diary data to identify joint trajectories in children’s physical activity and screen time over Waves 1–3. Key socio-demographic variables measured at Wave 1 were used to predict membership in different trajectories . The prospective consequences (at Wave 3) of time-use trajectories on health-related quality-of-life and socio-emotional outcomes were assessed. Results Three physical-activity/screen-time trajectories were identified for both cohorts: Cluster-A—children who maintained low levels of physical activity and screen time ( ∽50% of the sample), Cluster-B—children who progressively increased physical activity and maintained low screen-time levels ( ∽25% ), and Cluster-C—children who maintained low physical-activity levels and increased screen time ( ∽25% ). Children in Cluster-B experienced the best health-related quality-of-life and socio-emotional outcomes, while those in Cluster-C experienced the worst. Children who were female, Indigenous, from non-English-speaking backgrounds, not living with two biological parents, in more affluent households and neighbourhoods, without siblings and with parents with poor mental health were at greater risk of falling into Cluster-A or Cluster-C. Conclusion Our findings identified which children are most at-risk of falling into time-use trajectories that lead to poor health-related quality-of-life and socio-emotional outcomes later in life, increasing our ability to monitor, detect and prevent these suboptimal behaviours prior to their onset. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12966-019-0816-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Screen Time and Developmental Health: Results from an Early Childhood Study in Canada

“…These associations were statistically signi cant over and above children's further health behaviors -physical activity and sleep, as well as income and other demographics. Our results substantiate the ndings from previous research that have shown a negative link between screen time and physical [50], social-emotional [51] and mental health [9] outcomes among preschool-aged children.…”

Type of screen time moderates effects on outcomes in 4013 children: evidence from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children

“…A list of items coded as screen time is provided in Additional file 1: Table S1. Time-use diaries have been successfully used in previous studies investigating health behaviours in children [16–20].…”

Perceived Autonomy, Motivation Climate and Intention for Physical Activity. A Comparative Study of Students Based on Their Gender and Educational Level

“…It is clear from the above mentioned, that in order to establish the importance of physical activity in everyone's consciousness, the corresponding habits for health and quality of life should be instilled from an early age (Sallis & Patrick, 1994;Telama, Yang, Laakso & Vilkari, 1997;Del Pozo-Cruz et al, 2019). It is for this reason that PE and the influence of the PE teacher play a key role in school life, not only in cultivating motor and cognitive skills, but also in improving the quality of students' life in the present as well as in the long term (Sallis & McKenzie, 1991;Wright, Patterson, & Cardinal, 2000).…”