Nowhere to go: Parents' descriptions of children's physical activity during a global pandemic

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of the study was to understand, from the perspective of parents, how the COVID-19 shelter-in-place mandates affected children’s physical activity.Design: Open-ended surveySetting: Online Method: Data were collected from 335 parents living in the United States of America. Parents answered an open-ended prompt to describe their children's physical activity during COVID-19 shelter-in-place mandates. Following data collection, inductive and deductive content analysis examined patterns in the data. Results: Analyses indicated that shelter-in-place mandates restricted children’s opportunities for physical activity. However, if families had access to outdoor spaces or equipment, they could encourage and support more physical activity opportunities than those without. Families in the lower-income bracket had less access to outdoor space and subsequently those children had fewer opportunities to be physically active. Parents supported their children’s physical activity through their involvement and encouragement.Conclusion: These findings underscore the importance of access to outdoor spaces and equipment for increasing children’s physical activity. Findings can be used by educators and policy makers to equitably support families of lower socioeconomic status who reported less access to outdoor spaces.

A multi-perspective qualitative exploration of the reasons for changes in the physical activity among 10–11-year-old children following the easing of the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK in 2021

“…This qualitative analysis adds to the wider international narrative related to factors influencing observed changes in child physical activity over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic [14][15][16][17][18]. Previous qualitative research has explored this topic during earlier stages of the pandemic (March 2020 -January 2021) [24][25][26][27][28]. Although conducted in diverse settings and contexts, international qualitative research reflected many themes described in the current study.…”

“…Although conducted in diverse settings and contexts, international qualitative research reflected many themes described in the current study. Appropriate outdoor and indoor space, access to equipment, and parental support have been identified as facilitators of physical activity during the pandemic and related restrictions [24][25][26][27], a finding echoed in a number of quantitative studies [13]. It is important to note that parental influences [29,30] and access to facilities [30,31] have been shown to influence physical activity behaviour among children prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…In addition, exploring phenomena and themes through a multi-perspective lens provided a more nuanced and rich analysis. To date, qualitative research exploring this topic has predominantly focused on the perspectives of the parents [24,26], parents and children [25,27], and families (at least one parent and child) [28]. The design of the current study is unique in that it included the school environment/ perspective, allowing a large part of children's pandemic experience that parents may have limited knowledge of to be integrated into the analysis.…”

Influence of COVID-19 pandemic and related quarantine procedures on metabolic risk

“…For instance, in Finland, a less densely populated country, a lot of outdoor activities such as trekking, cross-country skiing, and gardening have increased significantly, because these can be done with a distance from others and the country did not have a complete lockdown albeit many restrictions related to indoor activities were introduced. From a survey done among parents in the United States (US), it is evident that equitable access to outdoor spaces and play equipment generally support children’s physical activity during shelter-in-place mandate due to COVID-19 epidemic [ 28 ]. A decrease in outdoor activities and an increase in time spent using the internet and social network services, playing online games, and watching television may also result in a harmful impact on their eating habit [ 29 ].…”

A comparison of sleep-wake patterns among school-age children and adolescents in Hong Kong before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…During the pandemic, socioeconomic status is repeatedly shown to be a key determinant for various infection risks and infection outcomes worldwide, including in Hong Kong (11). For young people specifically, school closure and the social restrictions would likely cause more activity limitations for those with fewer financial resources (12).…”