Active commuting to school among NSW primary school children: implications for public health
Section snippets
Background
The rapid global increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity has been linked to environments that encourage sedentary behavior, including environments that place greater reliance on motor vehicles (French et al., 2001; Catford, 2003). Strategies aimed at increasing ‘lifestyle’ physical activity in children have emerged out of the public health need to prevent obesity and to establish early healthy habits (Sallis and Patrick, 1994; Biddle et al., 1998). Active commuting to school has
Participants
A computer assisted telephone interview (CATI) survey was conducted during April 2002 as part of the evaluation of the NSW ‘Walk Safely to School Day’ (WSTSD). Households were randomly selected using the electronic white pages telephone directory. Eligible respondents were identified during initial screening as: (1) parent or primary carer of a child 5–12 years of age; and, (2) responsible for overseeing/taking the household's child/ren to school. The survey was introduced as a study on child
Results
Overall, 812 interviews with parents were completed, representing a 67% response rate. Most of the respondents (80.3%, ) were females, 56% were under 40 years old, 87% were married/ de-facto, 11% spoke a language other than English at home, 30% had tertiary education and 68% () had a full or part-time job, and of those employed parents/carers 89 (16.4%) reported that they walked/cycled on their journey to work. Half (51.6%) of the children were girls and 76% were 5–10 years old. The
Discussion
This paper provides a broader definition of active commuting to include any ‘leg’ of a trip to or from school that includes walking or cycling. Even with this broad definition, less than half of the children were ‘active commuters’ in any given week. On an average day only one third of children were active commuters, and one-quarter undertook single-mode active travel, while for two thirds the home–school journey was entirely motorized. This low prevalence is similar to that found in traffic
Acknowledgments
The NSW Health Department provided the funding for this survey.
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