Perceived barriers to children’s active commuting to school: a systematic review of empirical, methodological and theoretical evidence

Abstract

Active commuting to school (ACS) may increase children’s daily physical activity and help them maintain a healthy weight. Previous studies have identified various perceived barriers related to children’s ACS. However, it is not clear whether and how these studies were methodologically sound and theoretically grounded. The purpose of this review was to critically assess the current literature on perceived barriers to children’s ACS and provide recommendations for future studies. Empirically based literature on perceived barriers to ACS was systematically searched from six databases. A methodological quality scale (MQS) and a theory utilization quality scale (TQS) were created based on previously established instruments and tailored for the current review. Among the 39 studies that met the inclusion criteria, 19 (48.7%) reported statistically significant perceived barriers to child’s ACS. The methodological and theory utilization qualities of reviewed studies varied, with MQS scores ranging between 7 and 20 (Mean =12.95, SD =2.95) and TQS scores from 1 to 7 (Mean =3.62, SD =1.74). A detailed appraisal of the literature suggests several empirical, methodological, and theoretical recommendations for future studies on perceived barriers to ACS. Empirically, increasing the diversity of study regions and samples should be a high priority, particularly in Asian and European countries, and among rural residents; more prospective and interventions studies are needed to determine the causal mechanism liking the perceived factors and ACS; future researchers should include policy-related barriers into their inquiries. Methodologically, the conceptualization of ACS should be standardized or at least well rationalized in future studies to ensure the comparability of results; researchers’ awareness need to be increased for improving the methodological rigor of studies, especially in regard to appropriate statistical analysis techniques, control variable estimation, multicollinearity testing, and reliability and validity reporting. Theoretically, future researchers need to first ground their investigations in theoretical foundations; efforts should be devoted to make sure theories are used thoroughly and correctly; important theoretical constructs, in particular, need to be conceptualized and operationalized appropriately to ensure accurate measurement. By reviewing what has been achieved, this review offered insights for more sophisticated ACS studies in the future.

Children's school commuting in the Netherlands: Does it matter how urban form is incorporated in mode choice models?

“…Modeling urban form variables as main effects makes interpretation easier, but correlations arising among these covariates make individual effects hardly assignable and challenges statistical inference (Noland et al, 2014;Lu et al, 2014). To overcome this, either PCA (Jolliffe, 2002) can be performed or an index can be constructed.…”

“…Second, apart from a few exceptions (Schlossberg et al, 2006;Steinbach et al, 2012) (Giles-Corti, Timperio, Bull, & Pikora, 2005;Wong et al, 2011;Lu et al, 2014;Kaplan et al, 2016), walking and cycling refer to dissimilar behaviors that are probably affected by different urban form correlates, or by correlates that differ in their effect size (De Vries, Hopman-Rock, Bakker, Hirasing, & Van Mechelen, 2010;Aarts, Mathijssen, Van Oers, & Schuit, 2013). Failure to analyze different modes separately might result in suboptimal outcomes and less effective interventions (Giles-Corti et al, 2005;Panter et al, 2010).…”

“…The common practice is to model them as individual covariates (Schlossberg et al, 2006;Broberg & Sarjala, 2015). But since these variables tend to be strongly associated, multicollinearity arises, which is a problem that has thus far been disregarded (Wong et al, 2011;Lu et al, 2014). Frank et al (2006Frank et al ( , 2010 therefore developed a composite measure based on intra-related urban form components repeatedly constructed in studies (Kerr et al, 2006;Brownson et al, 2009;Manaugh & El-Geneidy, 2011).…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, it is the first comparative study of these three urban form utilizations and how they affect model interpretation. While several Anglophone studies have been published (e.g., Kerr et al, 2006;McMillan, 2007;Noland, Park, Von Hagen, & Chatman, 2014;Oliver et al, 2014;Mitra, Papaioannou, & Habib, 2016;Woldeamanuel, 2016), European studies (e.g., M€ uller et al, 2008;Broberg & Sarjala, 2015;Kaplan et al, 2016) are underrepresented (Lu et al, 2014). We focused on the Netherlands, a country that is highly attuned to walking and cycling (Pucher & Buehler, 2008).…”

Evidence-Based Social Work Interventions to Improve Client Attendance in Rural Mental Health: An Overview of Literature

“…3 According to the 2010 Census of the United States, urban areas must encompass at least 50,000 people in the US, and rural areas encompass all population, housing, and territory not included within an urban area. 4 As of 2010, 51 million US residents, about 1/6 of the total US population, lived in rural areas.…”