Development of a Method for Measuring Active Outdoor Play in Preschool-Aged Children: Integrating Accelerometer, GPS,...

Area of Science:

• Pediatric Health
• Physical Activity Measurement
• Child Development

Background:

• Current physical activity (PA) measurement methods lack domain-specific context, hindering understanding of active outdoor play (AOP) in preschool children.
• AOP is a critical PA domain for healthy development in 3-5 year olds.
• Traditional methods fail to capture the nuances of AOP, impacting research and interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel multi-source method for measuring AOP in preschool-aged children.
• To quantify AOP by movement intensity using the developed method.
• To examine the contribution of AOP to total daily physical activity.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional study involving 92 preschool children and their parents in Alberta, Canada.
• Integration of accelerometer, Global Positioning System (GPS), and time-use diary data over 7 days.
• Operational definition of AOP as non-trip, non-organized outdoor PA, classified by intensity using accelerometer data.

Main Results:

• Children averaged 192.9 minutes/day in AOP.
• This included 143.1 minutes/day of light-intensity and 49.8 minutes/day of moderate- to vigorous-intensity AOP.
• AOP constituted 60.6% of total daily physical activity on average.

Conclusions:

• A novel multi-source method effectively measures AOP in preschool children, overcoming limitations of single-source approaches.
• This method enhances domain-specific PA knowledge beyond general PA metrics.
• Future research can apply this method across various contexts to deepen understanding of children's physical activity patterns.